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Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

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Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#61

Post by DLarsen »

imp wrote: post #22
edw519 wrote: post #6

Enterprise software sucks. We don't talk about it much here at hn, but think about it. Every man-made object you encounter every day was manufactured somewhere. And moved, more than once. Now add in all the sales, marketing, customer service, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, etc., etc., etc. needed to support that manufacturing and distribution. Next, add financial markets, healthcare, energy, entert…

Is the solution better software or smarter managers? I mean, you know that enterprise software sucks, but do the people who pay for it know that it sucks? How would you tackle that problem?

The manager often isn't savvy enough to discern whether the software itself sucks. You may be able to blame a lot of lousy business processes on enterprise software, but a willingness to move forward without fixing major known problems can also be very harmful. Everyone may agree that the process needs improvement, but too often that process gets baked into a new process or software application. When that happens, chances are things will continue to suck for a very long time.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#62

Post by mikeklaas »

steveklabnik wrote: post #11

I live in Pittsburgh. We have a huge lack of talent at the moment. There are tons of startups with funding that are looking to hire people, but a huge lack of skilled people around. We've got companies paying $1,000 bonuses to anyone who can get a hire. It's crazy. I'm not sure how to properly attract and keep talent in the city.

$1000 (often higher) referral bonuses are quite common in the industry. It's hard to hire talented hackers in general, good times and bad.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#63

Post by mixmax »

edw519 wrote: post #6

Enterprise software sucks. We don't talk about it much here at hn, but think about it. Every man-made object you encounter every day was manufactured somewhere. And moved, more than once. Now add in all the sales, marketing, customer service, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, etc., etc., etc. needed to support that manufacturing and distribution. Next, add financial markets, healthcare, energy, entert…

I can only second edw519's comment, and add a bit to it.

Building enterprise software is not only about building software, it's also about processes. Every company with more than a dozen employess has processes for dealing with just about everything. How information flows from A to B, who controls it, who can edit it, who can view it and who approves it.

This is primarily a strategic decision. Enterprise software has to accomodate processes and play by the rules, powergames and politics set forth by the firm it is used by. This is different than building B2C apps where the goal is more transparent. If you build dropbox the goal of the software is pretty obvious. If you build enterprise software there are a lot of stakeholders with diffferent agendas and priorities, and if you want to sell to them you need to accomodate all of them. So you need to knwo how firms operate behind the lines, and you definitely have to know how to sell to them. How good the software is is only one of many priorities.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#64

Post by yummyfajitas »

stcredzero wrote: post #45
edw519 wrote: post #6

Enterprise software sucks. We don't talk about it much here at hn, but think about it. Every man-made object you encounter every day was manufactured somewhere. And moved, more than once. Now add in all the sales, marketing, customer service, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, etc., etc., etc. needed to support that manufacturing and distribution. Next, add financial markets, healthcare, energy, entert…

And all of this needs software. And most of what they have sucks. I mean really sucks. That's because Enterprise Software is actually an arbiter of controlling people through controlling workflow. It's solidified corporate politics! Entrenched interests within a company don't want to optimize the company's bottom line. They want to optimize to further their own interests. I once posted about a transatlantic E3 line t…

The way to fix this is through highly granular free market economics. Let a company set standards and empower multiple groups to compete to those standards.

This sounds good to hackers like us who work at small companies, but it's actually fairly dangerous for a big company to do this. One of the groups might risk the company (rather than just themselves) in order to make largish profits.

An extreme example of this: suppose AIG Financial Products is independent of AIG Boat Insurance. Then AIG Financial Products might make really risky bets which, if they go bad, could also take out AIG Boat Insurance and AIG Event Liability Insurance.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#65

Post by AmberShah »

- Work should be value based (productivity or ROI or something) rather than paid by salary or by the house - All people should be able to work from home if they want to

Some of this is "company culture" but technology can help it along a lot more than it currently is. There is a lot of software out there that addresses this issue, but it's just not solved because it's NOT THAT WAY at 99.99999% of companies. Great technology should be able to make this seamless.

This is not a spec for a software product because I don't know what spec would solve the problem. That's what makes it valuable.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#66

Post by nostrademons »

mixmax wrote: post #63
edw519 wrote: post #6

Enterprise software sucks. We don't talk about it much here at hn, but think about it. Every man-made object you encounter every day was manufactured somewhere. And moved, more than once. Now add in all the sales, marketing, customer service, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, etc., etc., etc. needed to support that manufacturing and distribution. Next, add financial markets, healthcare, energy, entert…

I can only second edw519's comment, and add a bit to it. Building enterprise software is not only about building software, it's also about processes. Every company with more than a dozen employess has processes for dealing with just about everything. How information flows from A to B, who controls it, who can edit it, who can view it and who approves it. This is primarily a strategic decision. Enterprise software has…

This is a large portion of why enterprise software sucks - accommodating all those processes is a huge pain in the ass, it tends to scare off many of the people who think that software should be elegant, and it tends to result in overly-complicated, byzantine software from the rest.

There's a lot of money to be made for those willing to cut through the bullshit, but be aware that there's a lot of bullshit to cut through.

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#67

Post by steveklabnik »

mikeklaas wrote: post #62
steveklabnik wrote: post #11

I live in Pittsburgh. We have a huge lack of talent at the moment. There are tons of startups with funding that are looking to hire people, but a huge lack of skilled people around. We've got companies paying $1,000 bonuses to anyone who can get a hire. It's crazy. I'm not sure how to properly attract and keep talent in the city.

$1000 (often higher) referral bonuses are quite common in the industry. It's hard to hire talented hackers in general, good times and bad.

Maybe I'm just not connected to BigCorps around here, but it's pretty unusual in my experience. Maybe that's part of Pittsburgh's problem?

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#68

Post by japherwocky »

fletchowns wrote: post #9

We need to eliminate packaging waste. My laundry detergent ran out, so I had to go get some more. Why am I throwing this big plastic jug back into the recycling loop? Why can't I just take it back to the store and fill it up again? I could use the same jug for years and years and years. How many of those jugs do you think are just going into landfills every day? I saw a link recently to a "bring your own container" t…

Michigan's deposit system is very effective at getting beverage containers recycled!

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#69

Post by nostrademons »

shimon wrote: post #47
steveklabnik wrote: post #11

I live in Pittsburgh. We have a huge lack of talent at the moment. There are tons of startups with funding that are looking to hire people, but a huge lack of skilled people around. We've got companies paying $1,000 bonuses to anyone who can get a hire. It's crazy. I'm not sure how to properly attract and keep talent in the city.

1. In Boston, ITA Software pays a referral bonus of $4000. 2. Pittsburgh loses hackers because they prefer to live elsewhere. To fix this make the culture, neighborhoods, or climate more attractive to hackers. (Easy to say, but hard to attempt and perhaps impossible to achieve.)

$2k-$5k has been a typical referral bonus at places I've worked. I have friends in the financial industry that got up to a $15k referral bonus (and were correspondingly aggressive in trying to recruit me).

Re: Ask HN: What are problems that need to be solved?

#70

Post by mainsequence »

These may or may not be super-profitable or particularly solvable via software:

Basic math and science literacy for a large percentage of people (in the US at least, but I suspect many other places as well).

The pipeline from childhood to the ability to make something people want.

Access to the opportunity to gain economically valuable skills for those who happen to be born in poor families, neighborhoods, cities, countries.

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