george_morgan

I think the statements: "CA were ineffective charlatans" and "Carole Cadwalladr is misinformed" and "the methods by which CA attempted to influence the election were wrong" can all be simultaneously true.

The 'hard STEM degrees' and 'brutal interviews' are irrelevant if the industry is functioning: are the people in these roles are able to perform them and are the companies profitable whilst able to pay high salaries.

If they are, there's nothing wrong with this situation.

His perspective seems built around ego. It's no longer the special club he wanted it to be, it's not "hard enough" for the people he sees as "wrong" to participate. He liked YC when it was a band no one else had heard of etc. etc.

Without knowing the metrics for how YC judges the performance of its intake and their future objectives, there's no way of making sensible recommendations for how (or if) it should change.

"I have the world at my hands. Access to written knowledge from any point in the history of time. Tens of thousands of video games and movies available for under $10 and/or a small subscription price. I can learn the arts, pick up any hobby, or even teach myself to code for free. I can fly around the world and stay in hostels in other countries at the same price (or cheaper than) I pay rent in the US. If I run out of tp it is delivered to my doorstep the next day."

Every other generation has all this now, too. But they also have houses and less debt.

You should probably check the authors resume: https://georgetannenbaum.com/resume/

He certainly understands the concept of brand and product advertising.

Passive safety sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd want to focus on when designing nuclear reactors.

News+ is the new subscription service, in addition to the free service ('News').

Yes. I think many in their 30s and older have missed the new reality.

That more culture is being created on the internet on mobile platforms and apps they've never heard of (and in languages they don't speak) than ever before.

The weird web is alive but it lives in TikTok and WeChat etc.

Yes, I don't understand why he supposedly kept the account 'secret' (why not run two, one for the demo and one for... whatever else!?).

...what?

> So the business model is asking users for a donation? This sounds more like a non-profit to me.

I think the idea is to get enough donations that they're no longer a non-profit.

My understanding was that basic banking in the US lags most of Europe; contactless infrastructure is poor, mobile payments non-standardised, charges for basic accounts & general fees are all more common, more barriers to current (checking?) account switching (this is standardised in the UK by BACs & the current account switch service).

It is a better environment for the challengers outside the US because there is better infrastructure & standardisation which allows them to compete with bigger incumbents.

“The real you” also doesn’t know math, science, how to read, operate a computer, how to cook...

...learning isn’t a bad idea.

Absolutely.

It’s not limited to marketing either, management theory is full of this too.

Almost all of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s work and reputation was built on unverified case studies and anecdotes. (A great book on this is ‘The management myth’.)

Everyone hates advertising, until they lose their dog.

It's fair for us to assume you didn't actually read it, as much as you may plead for us to think otherwise.

This clearly isn't a simple story of 'happy man in a humble job'.

I mean, the man still buys lottery tickets for a start...

It's a really bizarre bit of writing in general. I'm oddly bothered by how much this guy hates breakfast, without actually explaining why.

> “A sales breakfast for seven hundred people?” I grimaced. “That’s downright disgusting!”

What.

Ah, but marketing isn’t simply coercion or persuasion. For instance, if you’re gathering requirements from customers before, during and after the development of a product you’re doing marketing whether you realise it or not.

Considering demand for product is outstripping their ability to produce product, their sales & marketing teams are setting a high standard of work the rest of the company has yet to meet.

Feels a little unfair if they were the ones getting axed.

Quite. The only 'sort of smoking' gun is that one slide. From which an awful lot more has been extrapolated.

Looks to me like they've been a bit ambiguous with promises of earned media, which is a typical goal of conventional advertising campaigns.

> If you want to learn how to solve business problems, there is a course that is uniquely suited for this. Software Engineering.

I wouldn't say software engineering is necessarily uniquely suited to this. Any 'practice based' study will offer useful tools (mental & physical) that are applicable to business: product design, architecture, urban planning etc.

Anything that offers a few frameworks for analysis, hypothesis and prototyping really.

JD Power typically produce rankings of faults per 100 vehicles, which seems to be the best metric: http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/jd-power-2018-us-vehic...

Unfortunately Tesla aren't part of this study.

All that the Hotmail story really highlighted was the reliance on inductive reasoning by actuaries. It also didn't make clear whether they had identified drivers who caused accidents or had been the victims of accidents. Insurers will penalise people who make claims regardless of fault.

It's not a particularly useful comparison for this situation.

Also when 'people who watch broadcast TV' represent an overwhelming majority, the suggestion that they're essentially a bit stupid is well... rather arrogant, no?

It's a bold claim that Netflix & Amazon customers are more proactive & 'thinking' than others. Or that TV viewers are more passive & more easily influenced.

The claim of 'influence' is probably worth exploring: How does advertising work? What does it mean to influence someone?

There has been a lot of research into this topic over the past couple of years. Particularly as the effectiveness of digital advertising & ad tech are under increasing pressure.

> a lot of people around me are the same

Anytime you find yourself saying this, it's worth exploring how your own experiences might be biasing your judgement.

Recent research in the UK for example shows a much more nuanced view of the changes in TV viewing behaviour: https://www.thinkbox.tv/Research/Nickable-Charts/Killer-Char...

It's not surprising, but it is naive. There is very little marketing training or institutional knowledge (particularly in the tech sector) which leads to a natural bias to what is easiest to measure.

Typically the stuff we would find easiest to measure has been called 'direct response' marketing, which is just one subset of marketing communications.

Any credible marketer will be creating plans that balance both short term and long term advertising effects.

The most up to date research on this: http://www.ipa.co.uk/page/The-Long-and-the-Short-of-It-publi...

Well, soldiers aren't super human so I'm glad they did. (Echoes of Lee Rigby...)

The essence of the problem is this: 'tech' is now simply too big and too important to our culture and society to be only about the technology.

Now, decisions made at Google don't just change how we search the internet.

Now, decisions made at Uber don't just change car hire.

Now, decisions made at Amazon don't just change online book selling.

Technical competence is essential for competition and innovation, but social competence (and conscience) are essential to growth and longevity.