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Goodbye, Twilio

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#271

Post by anaganisk »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #163
paxys wrote: post #97

"The company was great when it was just engineers, but then they hired account managers and sales reps and business people and marketers who ruined everything." Common refrain from developers at SaaS companies who don't realize that the party they were enjoying all these years was directly funded by VC dollars, and these other people who they hate so much in fact do critical jobs and are necessary for converting all…

I think you read a different article. Miguel is aggrieved by the fact that it is no longer a developer focused company, which was the reason for its success. Sure, you need sales, marketing and the rest of it; it does not mean that you need to forget what made you great in the first place.

I think I can play both sides, GIMP vs Photoshop, Photoshop Vs GIMP. Both have great engineers but sales and marketing is subject to opinion based on how you see them.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#272

Post by XorNot »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #263
XorNot wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I disagree with the OP, this is just as naive. What we enjoy about our modern lives in Western societies is a productive mixed-market economy. The "pure capitalism" argument is just as naive as to pretend it's failed with no redeeming features (which itself, is fallacious because the critics propose no alternative they care to describe - but pointing out a problem with the current system doesn't mean anyth…

There are plenty of critics proposing alternatives I get a monthly magazine called Jacobin that is filled with bough criticisms and alternatives Trying to find people who aren’t either fundamentally greedy or barely hanging on is nearly impossible so it’s just mostly people exploiting each other. I am personally trying to build a cooperative that is mutually owned by employees, and it’s structurally really hard becau…

> You don’t go into a banking situation, without telling them the type of business, and the type of profit that you expect.

But that's because you're not just banking with someone, you're asking them for a loan. That money has a cost associated with it so the bank quite reasonably wants an indication you're able and likely to repay it.

Waste is waste under any economic model: if the input costs in whatever form they take exceed outputs the endeavor isn't viable.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#273

Post by Prickle »

andsoitis wrote: post #260
louwrentius wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some have more money than they can spend in a lifetime while others are homeless. This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth.

> Some have more money than they can spend in a lifetime while others are homeless. > This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth. Who are you blaming? If you're so virtuous, why don't you give away half of your money to a homeless person?

This "why don't you do it?" type of argument is probably the most common straw-man response to this topic.

The whole point, is to point out that some people have enough money to uplift hundreds of thousands out of poverty. Some have greater personal wealth than the GDP of an entire country, and that those people should either:

Give up some part of their wealth for the greater good.

Never be allowed to accumulate that much personal wealth in the first place.

The common person, like myself, doesn't have that kind of money. I cannot even afford a house for myself.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#274

Post by anon-3988 »

brigadier132 wrote: post #242
rapind wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every “win-win” most certainly produces side effects, usually unmeasured, which leads to naive statements like “it’s not zero sum”. We may no longer be peasants (hard to prove), but a large number of extinct species and ecological disasters would like to argue the “not zero sum” point.

If the world were zero sum, that means no new value has been created for humanity, ever. The world population has grown ~22x since 1400s. Are we now splitting our meager peasant loaves of bread 22 ways? Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Just state what you actually are, which is anti-human.

What he said that "its hard to prove if we are still peasants" is wrong. But you cannot argue that we human have benefitted at the cost of nature? Also,

>Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer.

Is also not true. Having a 1km lawn is excess. Flying solo on a private plane to visit an office halfway across the world for 1-2 days every other week is excess. No sane person arguing for this position is claiming that people who can barely find food every day is living in excess and must suffer degrowth. It is the privileged that needs to degrowth and redistribute their excess wealth. Do you really think that the Earth can sustain had every single person on Earth lives like the ultra wealthy? Or even as the middle-class American with single unit home in the suburb? We would probably annihilate almost all of "interesting" flora/fauna and be left with chickens and cows if that at all. Maybe that's a perfectly reasonable trade? AFAIK humanity must take priority over every other being AFAIC.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#275

Post by Dylan16807 »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #24
johndhi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The campaign stuff is related to legal requirements. Ultimately the texting emailing and calling via APIs wild west is being shut down across the world by a hundred different government and regulatory organizations. Twilio surely has huge headaches in this area.

Good. The fact that the FCC refuses to act (and GOP in Congress blockades things like chair nominations (read up on what happened to Gigi Sohn) to ensure inaction) against telcos just allowing spammers to ruin our national communications infrastructure because the pennies they get from them are worth more than all their consumers is an embarrassment to our country.

It's not good to apply anti-spam paperwork against a service that never initiates a conversation.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#277

Post by andsoitis »

Prickle wrote: post #273
andsoitis wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some have more money than they can spend in a lifetime while others are homeless. > This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth. Who are you blaming? If you're so virtuous, why don't you give away half of your money to a homeless person?

This "why don't you do it?" type of argument is probably the most common straw-man response to this topic. The whole point, is to point out that some people have enough money to uplift hundreds of thousands out of poverty. Some have greater personal wealth than the GDP of an entire country, and that those people should either: Give up some part of their wealth for the greater good. Never be allowed to accumulate that…

> Give up some part of their wealth for the greater good.

And you think they don’t?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#278

Post by rapind »

brigadier132 wrote: post #242
rapind wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every “win-win” most certainly produces side effects, usually unmeasured, which leads to naive statements like “it’s not zero sum”. We may no longer be peasants (hard to prove), but a large number of extinct species and ecological disasters would like to argue the “not zero sum” point.

If the world were zero sum, that means no new value has been created for humanity, ever. The world population has grown ~22x since 1400s. Are we now splitting our meager peasant loaves of bread 22 ways? Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Just state what you actually are, which is anti-human.

> If the world were zero sum, that means no new value has been created for humanity, ever.

This statement is straight up false. Obviously you gain and lose value, and are interested in whether it's a net gain or loss. It's worth noting that a gain or a loss here is only anecdotal to our own human experience so far and without accounting for potential debts (externalities) still owed... like global warming, monoculture, antibiotic resistance, nukes, etc. You're attempting to make a rule in an extremely non-scientific manner, and making a ton of assumptions to boot.

> Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Just state what you actually are, which is anti-human.

I've never even heard of this Degrowth ideology... My ideology, if you can call it that, is simply taking responsibility for our actions instead of making up a bunch of buzzword horseshit. I'm not advocating for anything but the basic admission that it stinks when we fart. This "not zero sum" statement is as much a fantasy as religion is. I'm not asking you to stop farting or to save a whale. Just stop polluting our eyes and ears with corporate doublespeak.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#279

Post by FrenchTouch42 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #103

There’s nothing surprising here. This is a typical cycle for a venture backed technology business. There’s just nothing else to say here other than this is 100% expected outcome if you decide to build a product on venture capital money, which requires an exit and an increasingly large exit to the point where you IPO. Unless you avoid this structural pathway, you will be 100% guaranteed to do this. I am unaware of a v…

What about Expensify?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#280

Post by rapind »

anon-3988 wrote: post #274
brigadier132 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the world were zero sum, that means no new value has been created for humanity, ever. The world population has grown ~22x since 1400s. Are we now splitting our meager peasant loaves of bread 22 ways? Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Just state what you actually are, which is anti-human.

What he said that "its hard to prove if we are still peasants" is wrong. But you cannot argue that we human have benefitted at the cost of nature? Also, >Nobody cares about your stupid degrowth ideology that advocates for death and people to be poorer. Is also not true. Having a 1km lawn is excess. Flying solo on a private plane to visit an office halfway across the world for 1-2 days every other week is excess. No s…

> What he said that "its hard to prove if we are still peasants" is wrong.

I think this depends on how you classify peasant. If we can agree that it's about income inequality, and not quality of life, then there was a study done comparing income inequality in the late eighteenth century to current day, which concluded that "Incomes were much more equally distributed in colonial America than in America today, or in other countries in the late eighteenth century". https://www.nber.org/papers/w18396

Ultimately it depends on the specifics and the dates we are comparing. I don't think people fully realize how significant income inequality really is today.

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