Congratulations to the founders for the launch, but unfortunately I had the same response.
In situations like these - intrigued but with no real understanding of what the product is - I want the video to show me a real-world example in about ten seconds flat. A more glitzy promo video has its place, but not in a post to Hacker News.
This is phenomenal work. A genuinely modern take on MUDs of old. Is multiplayer already implemented? I'm weirdly interested in starting up a good old MUD clan/guild again on an all-player killer server...
Thank you! Multiplayer is definitely implemented, and you can have all kinds of flavor of PvP. Free for all, zone restricted, with different death looting modes (some worlds let you loot all of your opponent's gear, others none).
It's anecdotal, but unfortunately I'd say that the experience is much the same in single-payer Canada. I have never had a GP who is not trying to rush me out of their office as they seem to get paid by the amount of patients they see, not the quality and depth of care they provide. I now declare I have X questions up front and then work my way through them, ignoring the GP's repeated attempts to bring the appointment to a close before I'm ready.
Health care is massively broken everywhere. I don't know how we move the incentives in the system to quality over quantity.
Nice deck! And terrific market positioning; in doing my own research of trying to get all organizational data in a single place in an otherwise non-technical organization, I've done demos of Fivetran and a few of your other competitors and your analysis of their weaknesses are spot on. I'll be giving your product a try.
Really interesting concept and product - perfect for the times we're in! Desperately needs a video of the product in action on that home page, get on it! :)
I remember listening to a Masters In Business podcast [1] with the President of Qualcomm and listening to his explanation of why 5G was going to be a huge game-changer. He perked my interest by mentioning that he thought that _everything_ would have a 5G chip in it one day - garbage cans, mailboxes - but otherwise did not by my judgment give any significant reason that 5G would change something in the market when compared to 4G technology.
Does anyone have a strong reason they think that higher speeds and (I assume) low latencies would unlock something in the economy we're currently unable to achieve? I just don't see it.
The real motivation here is that mobile carriers want to take market share from cable companies. Mobile carriers want to be able to provide wireless to your phone that is good enough that you will pay more for an unlimited plan and cancel your cable subscription. 5G doesn't really do that much for garbage cans, they could already have 4G or wifi chips in them if anyone wanted that.
In most EU countries and in the US, major wired network companies are already in the wireless market (T-Mobile, Vodafone, AT&T, etc.), so your take would make sense only if they were to stop laying fiber, and replace it with towers. To achieve this though, it would require a massive investment, especially to circumvent network congestion.
The wireless distribution layer is really the only place mobile carriers are meaningfully bandwidth constrained. It's (relatively) easy and cheap to 10x or even 100x bandwidth available at a tower. The hard part is delivering that capacity to the end user. That's where 5G comes in.
There is an argument that it's crossing a magic boudnary to the point wherein it's almost like 'WiFi' as opposed to 'Wireless' in the sense that the bandwidth is there, and there is plenty of it.
If Qualcomm and the Carriers were not stuck in the 1940's with their utterly byzantine business models (remember 10-cents per WAP page on feature phones? They thought there were geniuses and were going to dominate with that Einstein business model) - then - the notion of 'your toaster on 5G' is a very material feasibility.
There is definitely the theoretical possibility for a 'true IoT revolution', but I think that the variety of ways they shoot themselves in the foot will keep any revolution at bay for a while.
Some 'dynamic' carrier in Japan, Korea or wherever could literally do something transformative and the rest wouldn't budge.
It took the creation of the iPhone (innovation + market power) to force a lot of theses parties to shift gears.
Startups, without power, won't be able to budge carriers, they have to be forced.
AR is one case. Maps are great today, but just last week someone delivering packages saw that I was pushing a bike and asked me how to get into the local bike shop. The entrance is in the alley, and at the end of canopy that is not easy to find at all. I believe that image recognition and a very fast connection could help with that problem.
It seems like a gimmick, but how many times have you known the address and not known where the door was? It happens a lot in medical buildings.
It's an incredibly busy position if you're doing it right! I've had development teams of 4 - 20 reporting to me, and I think my responsibilities have generally included:
- Being the point of contact between Development and the rest of the organization, fielding questions about what can and can't be done, plus t-shirt sizing on effort
- Keeping tooling and technology unified (not ending up with one project each using Vue.js, React, Ember, Angular...)
- Keeping up standards (around code reviews, documentation, testing and alerts, end user and developer training)
- Thinking long term about how features, services and tools being built today can be re-used tomorrow
- Decisions about budgets and how to approach a project (use internal people or outsource to a vendor; field RFP responses; negotiate and get paperwork signed)
A lot of communication (inter-team and intra-team), budget work and "architecting" stuff is a reasonable summary, I think.
I would say absolutely not. The habit of promoting competent technical people into management makes no sense to me, there is no reason to think a good coder would make a good manager. In fact it's probably the opposite case and the 10x type coders are probably a bit spectrum-y and would have real challenges managing people.
No, but IMO they should be one of the more technically competent people. Managing is not a full-time job, at least for a good manager its not a full time job.
I think you're underestimating how much work there is at the management level, especially in larger organizations. When management is doing their job, it won't be visible to you or your team. Things will just "align", and work well - but if things are moving smoothly in an organization with multiple teams, your management is working well.
There is a lot of systems thinking required in managing team structures, interfaces between those teams, managing communication between teams, hiring, setting technology standards & architecture, and so on (review the rest of this thread).
I do agree with your thesis though - a manager should be highly technical. I just don't think you can depend on their contribution to features & deliverables. Not because the work is "below" them, but because Engineering Management is a support role and should NOT need to choose between an IC-type task and helping unblock/support a member of their team due to a deadline :)
Potentially, managing isn't a full-time-job, full-time. There are management moments that can easily consume you for weeks/months, and if the manager should have been coding also, then the timeline is ruined. If the manager has slack, then the team can add staff as needed. Having a manager who is flat-out is bad - it slows decisions, introduces blocking functions everywhere, and ultimately makes things worse.
It still comes down to: Would you rather be seen as someone who creates value (profit), which is a "developer", or who works on odds and ends for the company and ultimately costs money, a "programmer"? Given the two options I think the most advantageous option is obvious.
I will admit however that my view on this is rather arbitrary. I don't think we really have a good way to resolve what's best.
