Magic+

Post by leni536 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 3:47 PM UTC

mosselman wrote: post #386

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? A personal assistant is someone that you know, that you vet, that you can gauge the skills and reliability of, and that you can hold genuinely accountable. And you are comparing hiring this person on a full time basis to an ad hoc and in many cases inferior "assistant" who is only available for a fraction of that time with no guarantee or indication of quality ahead of time. And not just that, but only extremel…

You completely hit the hammer on the head with both this comment and the parent. I just assume that a big amount of 20-25-ish developers here that make $180.000 are excited at the prospect of having a personal assistant to match their other unreasonable status enhancing purchases. As if any 'rich person' would spend any amount of time texting some random employee and give them access to his e-mails. If I were rich an…

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 3:57 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #326

cookiecaper wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not going to hire Magic+ for 40 hours per week. Many services are $100/hr or more, they're just rarely billed out that way, because people have this reaction. If you have a moderate amount of disposable income, you can afford to have simple requests filled by Magic+ for $15-$30 (10-20 minutes of personal assistant time) several times a month. The viability of the product for a solid middle class user really just…

> If you have a moderate amount of disposable income, you can afford to have simple requests filled by Magic+ for $15-$30 (10-20 minutes of personal assistant time) several times a month. Well, except that--as the grandparent post said--the minimum buy is $1000 for 10 hours. That puts it well outside "casual purchase, might come in handy" and into "must have a specific, long-term use in mind" for the typical middle-c…

Post by nlh » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 4:35 PM UTC

jld89 wrote: post #376

nlh wrote: post #352

I'm trying to figure out why I (too) am having a strong negative reaction to this. Let me think out loud: I'm fortunate enough to have a real personal assistant. She's amazing, she knows me, she does fantastic work, and I pay her a fair and reasonable wage (including health care) that's far less than $100/hour. So let's put me in the category of "people who can afford a personal assistant" but not quite in the catego…

Just curious, but what is your line of work and that of your friends with assistants?

Post by deepGem » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

Splines wrote: post #340

toddmorey wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a decent amount of innovation that can make the assistants more efficient, so you can improve profitability without driving down wages. But there's also something else: Since a high percentage of services will likely end in a transaction, there's a huge opportunity to become the Amazon-scale retailer of services. I find I don't even google products I want to buy anymore, I just immediately search Amazon. Amaz…

Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon. If you know what you're looking for, it's fine, but as soon as you try to comparison shop it falls apart fairly quickly. I've gotten into the habit of looking for experts on other sites that do hands-on comparisons for the thing I want to buy (some recent examples: rain jackets and fitness meters). Amazon is hone…

Post by mbroshi » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

eka808 wrote: post #468

And how can we guarantee that people behind magic+ don't get any conflict of interest ? Let say, for example, that i need a cab to move me from airport to the hotel with a bike to make the thing more complicated for a lambda traveler. How can I know in advance how much I will have to pay ? that the deal is decent ? that the guy will actually come ? I understand that they target rich people but I imagine one does not…