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Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

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Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#241

Post by ghaff »

puranjay wrote: post #233
ghaff wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like pretty much every other one of these market making companies. At a local level—it’s something that people can and do organize with telephones, email, and maybe calendars and spreadsheets. I’m not sure what the advantage of having the same service exist in a bunch of cities is. And you have the usual problem that most people prefer to use individuals they are comfortable with and have maybe been recommended…

I can understand the advantage of a global player in a category like transportation. Being able to Uber anywhere takes a lot of the pain out of traveling. But things like babysitting or dogwalking don't offer any advantages if they are globally available. You're going to need a dog walker in the same city, the same house, the same neighborhood. Most people would rather just find one walker they like and stick with th…

Even with Uber, the number of people who flit between cities around the world in a regular basis is fairly small. I travel quite a bit, including globally, and I don’t really use Uber much.

But there’s some advantage to being global or at least national in a way that isn’t relevant for services you use almost entirely at home.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#242

Post by cool-RR »

wolco wrote: post #89
fantasticFerret wrote: post #18

I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. The moment the interviewer told me they worked with…

A php stack is the right stack for 2017 or 2019 for a company like Wag. What would a javascript framework offer them? Their core product is connecting people and dogs. A php stack with laravel means they have a working website with authentication on day 1. What would a javascript framework offer them? Emailing tests or documents is very common during the interview process if the company is a startup. Offer them a git…

If they define themselves as a real estate company that has a website, sure, use a PHP framework.

If they define themselves as a technology company, which I believe they do, and they want lots of complex features for their services, and set an exorbitant valuation on that basis, then they better have the right infrastructure for that.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#243

Post by vageli »

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #218
lowercased wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were hiring an interior designer or painter who asked why a specific color or paint type was chosen, but gave no answer... that might still be weird.

This highlights something most devs don't understand. Product development is about developing a product not about writing code. All the choices we make should facilitate making a good product, writing good code is a side effect. In this metaphor the colour of the wall is equivalent to the product. The code is equivalent to whether the painters used brushes, pads or rollers or whether they used ladders or scaffolding…

> In this metaphor the colour of the wall is equivalent to the product.

If that's the case, asking about the choice of implementation language sounds like asking about the spec.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#244

Post by cglotr »

the_watcher wrote: post #142

> Wag looked like tech's next Big Thing Uhh, what? No, it didn't. Even the bull case never imagined it as anything like a "next big thing."

It tells you a lot about the current state of innovation when a solution to dog-walking is being touted as the "Next Big Thing."

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#245

Post by olalonde »

slovette wrote: post #127
dang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's apply the HN guidelines [1] and, more importantly their spirit, to this case. That spirit is to be reflective rather than reflexive [2], which means to interrupt the rapid reflex that springs up immediately ("what everyone is actually thinking"), inhibit the temptation to react, and give the slower, reflective part of the brain time to catch up. When I do that, the first thing that comes to me is that the…

Do you have any reading (books, blogs, etc) on this concept of reactive vs reflective thinking? I don't think I've ever seen it described this way and it nails a verbal description to something I've desperately tried to describe to myself and teach other people for years...

"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#246

Post by wolco »

xnyan wrote: post #119
wolco wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability to find php developers is usually a reason to choose php. It's actually harder to find good js developers. Javascript frameworks work nicely with php acting as an api. An even better approach is a hybrid that allows you to use a framework like Vue/React or a libruary like jQuery but also allows you to use php to power your pages. This gives you the ability to have an spa per section. A common approach is to u…

Hey! New dev honestly trying to learn why PHP matters at all in 2019. Is PHP something I should stop learning JS for? In all my (very limited) experience, PHP does not solve any problem JavaScript can't, and JS is also far more in demand.

Any language can solve similiar problems.

Take this built-in php function: array_column

array_column() returns the values from a single column of the input, identified by the column_key

To perform the same in Javascript you either need to write something or find a package. There are many examples like this of build-in useful functionality.

PHP allows you to do a lot with very little code which allows you to focus on a difficult problem rather than a difficult problem and how to shape it with whatever language.

Keep learning javascript but don't try to do everything with it. Ignoring php, ruby or python on the backend will slow you down. Ignoring sql would be another mistake.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#247

Post by usecontainers »

chewz wrote: post #209
thecleaner wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of this vision fund is basically Saudi oil money. These folks realize that oil doesn't have that much future if you think in terms of hundreds of years, so they are looking to diversify. Vision fund is not a tool to be on the cutting edge, its just a means to not be left behind. Hence they let VC market decide which horse is worth backing and then they swing their dollars around to see what happens.

This should be an obvious warning sign. Someone whose core business is losing money is trying to recoup them in an area that they have no clue about. This is a typical guy who feels pressure so he buys at the top and puts his money based on recommendation of others in a business that is going to be next big thing. A typical sucker in other words who will end up penniless. Poor Saudis.

>> Someone whose core business is losing money

What, oil? Go look up the average barrel cost for Saudi oil (hint: it's less than 2 lattes). Demand needs to drop to essentially zero before renewables are competitive with their oil. They are not losing money.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#248

Post by wolco »

xnyan wrote: post #117
wolco wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A php stack is the right stack for 2017 or 2019 for a company like Wag. What would a javascript framework offer them? Their core product is connecting people and dogs. A php stack with laravel means they have a working website with authentication on day 1. What would a javascript framework offer them? Emailing tests or documents is very common during the interview process if the company is a startup. Offer them a git…

Maybe I'm dumb - Can anyone tell me why PHP vs JS for a "generic" web application? \In 2019 there are far far far more developers with real experience developing in Javascript vs PHP. There are obviously a lot of other factors in considering the base dev language, but unless you can make a strong case for PHP vs JS, I'm picking JS every time because in the generic case they both meet my needs but a lot more devs work…

The pool of js developers available include php developers.

Specifically node developers cost more and are far fewer in numbers.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#249

Post by htfu »

wolco wrote: post #120
RandallBrown wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person that asked Wag this question, but I do think it was a valid one. I'll try and explain why. Even if they weren't the person that made the choice, them knowing the reasoning behind the choice tells you a lot about the team. I usually expect new members of teams to ask questions about why the application was written the way it was. This shows a general curiosity among team members and it shows that th…

You wouldn't ask for that information in that way. Most places would say because it's faster or why would you use anything else? Not give you any company history. Ask who makes technical decisions. Or what debt structure they have. Not why they choose aws over azure.

Assuming you're not desperate for work you're interviewing them just as much as they are you. Perfectly valid.

And you clearly misunderstood what they meant by technical debt.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#250

Post by [deleted] »

vageli wrote: post #243
hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This highlights something most devs don't understand. Product development is about developing a product not about writing code. All the choices we make should facilitate making a good product, writing good code is a side effect. In this metaphor the colour of the wall is equivalent to the product. The code is equivalent to whether the painters used brushes, pads or rollers or whether they used ladders or scaffolding…

> In this metaphor the colour of the wall is equivalent to the product. If that's the case, asking about the choice of implementation language sounds like asking about the spec.

[deleted]
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