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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

danluu.com

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Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#241

Post by mitchdoogle »

emtel wrote: post #139

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think Dan even attempts to answer the titular question! The article, while quite good, is just a very long list of things that suck, and anecdotes about people who tried to make things suck less. I’ve thought about this question very often, and I think the answer does come back to the market efficiency argument that Dan ridicules at the beginning. I think in many cases, what the market…

I've seen lots of products and services that are materially similar, if not identical, with vastly different prices, and the companies selling them are equally successful. Sometimes it's the company charging more that seems to be doing much better. I don't think there's any particular efficiency advantage. I think it's just a matter of marketing.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#242

Post by kccqzy »

> An example from another industry: when I worked at a small chip startup, we had in-house capability to do end-to-end chip processing (with the exception of having its own fabs), which is unusual for a small chip startup. When the first wafer of a new design came off of a fab, we'd have the wafer flown to us on a commercial flight, at which point someone would use a wafer saw to cut the wafer into individual chips so we could start testing ASAP. This was often considered absurd in the same way that it would be considered absurd for a small software startup to manage its own on-prem hardware. After all, the wafer saw and the expertise necessary to go from a wafer to a working chip will be idle over 99% of the time.

This paragraph from the article reminds me of the recent HN discussion about resilience. In this particular example idling 99% of the time is cheaper, but even if idling 99% of the time is slightly expensive, it might still be a good idea not to outsource due to resilience. What if the vendor goes bankrupt? What if the vendor's vendor is unable to perform their contractual duty due to a disease outbreak? Or a geopolitical risk? You avoid these risks if everything is in-house, so these risks need to be priced in when determining whether to outsource. But more often than not, these risks are priced at exactly zero.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#243

Post by jader201 »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #226
jader201 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. I’ve said this before on other threads, and it seems to resonate with others, so I’ll say it here too: I personally don’t care near as much about a single person’s opinion of a particular topic, as much as I care about the discussion of many people around a particular topic. And by “topic”,…

I have to strongly disagree. The lengthy article has much more thought put into it. It's almost always better researched and the author usually has relevant experience or expertise, and those are usually at least known to the reader in some way or easily discovered. I have seen many, many cases where a big portion of the top comments are either saying something similar to what the author of the article said, or they…

There’s not much to disagree with here.

I simply stated my experience — I never even said my experience was right or that it is wrong to read the article, or that others should experience HN the way I do.

I’m a slow reader and don’t have time to read lengthy articles, and therefore am drawn more to discussion.

You are (likely) a quicker reader and are drawn more to articles.

There’s room for both of us in the world — and on HN (I hope).

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#244

Post by ashtonkem »

Dunedan wrote: post #230

> Some commonly repeated advice is that firms should focus on their "core competencies" and outsource everything else, but if we look mid-sized tech companies, we can see that they often need to have in-house expertise that's far outside what anyone would consider their core competency unless, e.g., every social media company has kernel expertise as a core competency. I wouldn't call Twitter or any other unicorn a "m…

Twitter is a mid sized tech company though, with a mere 5,500 employees. Facebook and Google are an order of magnitude bigger, and half the size of Uber and Netflix. It’s also a tiny bit smaller than Doordash and AirBnB by comparison.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#245

Post by johnfn »

jader201 wrote: post #215
Strilanc wrote: post #88

It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. In particular, the comments seem mostly focused on consumer product build quality whereas the article is more focused on e.g. businesses trying to outsource something (like same day delivery) and getting a worse result even when they pay more than doing it internally. And the cultural obstacle…

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. I’ve said this before on other threads, and it seems to resonate with others, so I’ll say it here too: I personally don’t care near as much about a single person’s opinion of a particular topic, as much as I care about the discussion of many people around a particular topic. And by “topic”,…

I very much disagree with this. In fact, this article is a perfect counterexample to what you're saying, ironically - it's a lengthy, well thought out essay that the author clearly spent a lot of time thinking about and putting together. Quite honestly, it's very unlikely that any number of pithy HN comments could match up to it, and I say that with a fair amount of respect for the HN community at large. It's just very unlikely they're going to have insights on the same level: the author of the post had at least a couple of weeks of actual concentrated effort to put together thoughts on the topic.

Plus I just have a lot of respect for the author. Dan Luu is a smart guy.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#246

Post by ncmncm »

Jiro wrote: post #164

It's like asking why consumers go for low prices rather than good quality. Similar answer: Because it's easy for companies to hide poor quality, but impossible to hide high prices. (Although companies do their best to hide prices anyway, like airlines charging everything as an addon).

In many domains, higher prices fail to deliver better quality. You just pay more.

People learn to optimize for less anger over being cheated: it doesn't work well, but you didn't pay much. If you had paid more, you would (probably) be equally dissatisfied, but also feel like you got suckered.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#247

Post by jamiek88 »

klodolph wrote: post #167
jseliger wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like most people don't read carefully or for comprehension: https://jakeseliger.com/2022/01/31/most-people-dont-read-car... (A few of the replies I've gotten purely answered the title and didn't discuss the content.)

Most people can’t. “Read carefully or for comprehension” would probably translate to level 4/5 prose literacy skills in the NCES NAAL (National Center for Education Statistics National Assessment of Adult Literacy). Recent survey puts this group (level 4/5) at 12% of the adult population. Levels 4 and 5 are no longer separated because of the small percentage of people that fall into group 5. Level 4 tasks require you…

Twelve percent?? That is scary.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#248

Post by Decker87 »

ncmncm wrote: post #216

When I interview, I like to look around and see how many short people work there. A place that picks up the short people other companies don't must be recognizing their value. I would like to favor places with more women in tech jobs, but generally just don't find any at all, anywhere. Everywhere I have worked they were always trying to hire more women but never got any applicants, or couldn't hire the ones they foun…

No post body was provided.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#250

Post by ashtonkem »

angarg12 wrote: post #107

I just moved to the USA from the UK (having lived in Germany before) and the quality of the services I'm experiencing here is appalling. To get concrete, we submitted an application for an apartment let. After not hearing back for 4 days we reached out and it looks like somehow they misplaced our application. By then the unit we wanted was gone so they asked us to pay a holding fee to ensure they would keep another u…

Your letting experience is missing one key factor; you’re not the customer to the letting agency. The building owner is the customer, not you. As long as the apartment gets rented out and maintenance gets done well enough, the owner doesn’t really care if you have a bad experience. And the letting agency doesn’t have to care about you either, since their treatment of you has no effect on their bottom line.

The fact that they don’t feel ashamed of mistreating a non-customer is however cultural.

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