Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

blog.zactownsend.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 192 posts

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#31

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

energy123 wrote: post #22
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

Ethical issues of putting people out of a job? Please. This mindset has to be called out because it directly causes suffering via creating a societal permission structure for politicians to protect interest groups with protectionist trade policy and internal pork barreling policy. Economic productivity putting people out of jobs is both good and necessary and it is unethical to work against it.

> it directly causes suffering via creating a societal permission structure for politicians to protect interest groups with protectionist trade policy and internal pork barreling policy

What part of that is suffering, if it enables 100k constituents to put food on the table?

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#32

Post by [deleted] »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #25
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

> the only way to provide dispute resolution and customer service to 1B people is by depriving them of any chance to interact with a human, and forcing all interaction with the company to go through AI. The Catholic church has 1B "customers" and seems to be doing ok with human-to-human interaction without the need (or desire) for AI. They do so via ~ 500K priests and another 4M lay ministers

[deleted]

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#33

Post by robertlagrant »

QuercusMax wrote: post #28
guywithahat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it as inherently a problem; AI can (theoretically) be a lot more fair in dealing with claims, and responds a lot sooner. That said I suspect the founder is seriously overestimating the number of highly intelligent, competent people he can hire, and underestimating how much bureaucratic nonsense comes with insurance, but that's a problem he'll run into later down the road. Sometimes you have to hire three…

You're incredibly naive if you think AI will be used to pay out claims more fairly instead of being used as a deny-bot.

You can use people to deny as well. Or non-AI automation; just some business rules in a normal system.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#34

Post by CGMthrowaway »

nawgz wrote: post #30
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way to provide dispute resolution and customer service to 1B people is by depriving them of any chance to interact with a human, and forcing all interaction with the company to go through AI. The Catholic church has 1B "customers" and seems to be doing ok with human-to-human interaction without the need (or desire) for AI. They do so via ~ 500K priests and another 4M lay ministers

This comment is confusing. The Catholic church does not have 100 employees.

I didn't read "the only way..." as having the condition of 100 or less employees. In fact the 100 employees is mentioned in an earlier sentence that explicitly says they are using AI to accomplish such a low employee count. The comment I was replying to seems to imply AI was the only way to serve 1B people, without regard for the number of employees.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#35

Post by dehrmann »

energy123 wrote: post #22
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

Ethical issues of putting people out of a job? Please. This mindset has to be called out because it directly causes suffering via creating a societal permission structure for politicians to protect interest groups with protectionist trade policy and internal pork barreling policy. Economic productivity putting people out of jobs is both good and necessary and it is unethical to work against it.

My favorite example of complaints about "putting people out of jobs" is that's an argument against self-serve gas in New Jersey (and recently Oregon).

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#36

Post by alpha_squared »

guywithahat wrote: post #23
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

I don't see it as inherently a problem; AI can (theoretically) be a lot more fair in dealing with claims, and responds a lot sooner. That said I suspect the founder is seriously overestimating the number of highly intelligent, competent people he can hire, and underestimating how much bureaucratic nonsense comes with insurance, but that's a problem he'll run into later down the road. Sometimes you have to hire three…

> AI can (theoretically) be a lot more fair in dealing with claims

Respectfully, no it can't. From a Western perspective, specifically American, and from an average middle-class person's perspective, specifically American, it only appears to be fair.

However, LLMs are a codification of internet and written content, largely by English speakers for English speakers. There are <400m people in the US and ~8b in the world. The bias tilt is insane. At the margins, weird things happen that you would be otherwise oblivious to unless you yourself come from the margins.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#37

Post by throw10920 »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #34
nawgz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is confusing. The Catholic church does not have 100 employees.

I didn't read "the only way..." as having the condition of 100 or less employees. In fact the 100 employees is mentioned in an earlier sentence that explicitly says they are using AI to accomplish such a low employee count. The comment I was replying to seems to imply AI was the only way to serve 1B people, without regard for the number of employees.

It absolutely does not imply that. You read it wrong. It's very clear from the context that I'm talking about serving 1B people with only 100 employees.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#38

Post by Raidion »

guywithahat wrote: post #26
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business. Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.

The whole business is nonsensical. The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain, a recent Harvard grad is useless. From what I've heard, tons of their consultants are young people with minimal real industry experience

You pay for one or two people with real experience and 4 reasonably new hires whose job it is to answer questions posed by the senior team and to build documentation.

You want the senior people focusing on the problems, strategy, and comms and not data aggregation and power point formatting.

Half the time it doesn't actually matter who the consultant is, the business is just looking for an arbiter to provide a second opinion or justify a decision.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#39

Post by throw4847285 »

guywithahat wrote: post #26
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business. Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.

The whole business is nonsensical. The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain, a recent Harvard grad is useless. From what I've heard, tons of their consultants are young people with minimal real industry experience

They have a brutal up or out culture. The idea is that the recent grads are grunts who are ground into the dirt. They actively hope that most of them quit and the few who don't get promoted into positions where they do have the experience, or really, one very specific type of experience that consultancy firms select for. Similar setup to Big Law.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#40

Post by staticcaucasian »

guywithahat wrote: post #26
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business. Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.

The whole business is nonsensical. The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain, a recent Harvard grad is useless. From what I've heard, tons of their consultants are young people with minimal real industry experience

The Partner is the consultant. The 'recent grad' is just extra low-cost apprenticeship for the partner. The customer is (ridiculously over-) paying for the Partner's time and tolerating the apprentices that come along for the ride.
Post reply on HN