Vandy_Travis

That is a very succinct summary, thank you for that.

I was actually asking about this from the opposite person's perspective. I didn't catch the "in sales" part -- did I just miss that, or am I missing a larger context of his theory? Having missed that piece of info, I was wondering what this theory says about my own motivations (I would categorize myself in the 3rd category, where I try to help my friends. But shouldn't I question my own motivations, given this outlook?)

I suppose it's reasonable to question one's own motivations pretty regularly, anyhow.

Interesting links. I'd never heard of Mr. Ringer, or his theory before this.

My simplistic understanding of his 3 types theory is this: "In summation, I realized that no matter how a guy came on, he would, in the final analysis, attempt to grab all of my chips (again with the one exception that I pointed out)." (The exception being the classic "win-win", where the other party benefits from my success, thus aligning incentives.)

My reaction to reading that was to think about myself. If the theory is correct, then regardless of my own intentions, I'm going to try to "grab all [his] chips". That actually makes his "Type Number One" guy the most honest and ethical.

I don't think I can quite reconcile my own ethics with that analysis, but I'm willing to consider it. It paints a somewhat bleak picture of business ethics.

How do you read his theory, if you put yourself in the shoes of the other party in the transaction, rather than his first person?

My roommate is a doctor, and I've been having some discussions on this topic lately.

The biggest concept is to use technology to support the existing dr's workflow. This can vary, a lot, between different types of doctors.

The thing he most often comments upon is the text replacement feature for his office's electronic records. He can type "issued XYZ medication due to past history of .HT." and the system will automatically insert the relevant heart history information (maybe a recent test reading, etc.) into the record.

Saves him time in recording info into the patient records. That seems to be his #1 desire for better tech -- saving time. And making complete entry into the medical records is a good place to work, as it solves a frustration that already exists.

It does a good job of being brief and describing what uberzet allows me to do.

However, it feels fairly sparse, and it doesn't tell me what uberzet is. Is it a web app? Is it a page for me that i can send other people to in order to search my public folder?

A little more work on the layout would make me feel better about giving login credentials to my dropbox.

Can you help me understand the contempt you have for the Zynga games? I don't play, myself, but I do understand that the games exploit (negative? compulsive?) psychology, and they've used unethical business strategies.

But who cares? After all, it's unlikely the next Vonnegut is going to spend his time playing MafiaWars instead of writing "Slaughterhouse Five" or anything.

I am reminded of the aphorism, "Time you've enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."

On the other hand, equity compensation in a startup is also based on the riskiness of the equity. Even if an employee is not that "valuable", they should still not have the original terms of their agreements altered.

[I agree with all the points above, but wanted to add in the fact that early employees are rewarded for risk as well as production. Esp if they signed on for below market salaries, with stock calculated as deferred compensation.]

You could make sure that the requesting page is on your domain.

I 100% agree, when you're talking about the ads that are aired a hundred times a day on syndicated television. Then again, the shows are terrible, so I suppose it's fitting that the ads match.

However, what about Apple's 1984 ad? Or the BMW mini-movie advertisements they ran about 6 years ago?

There are some incredibly cool concept ads out there. They usually are not the ones broadcast, but if you watch the end of the year awards for the industry, there are some very creative minds working there. (And creating some impressive work).

You are right -- there are some neat aspects to this model.

However, it also tends to devalue the work invested by the analysts. They are doing the work for essentially a lottery ticket -- winner take all. That's the reason that it can be so cost effective to the company running the competition -- they don't absorb the costs of the failures (or less optimal approaches).

Those costs have to be absorbed by someone. In this model, they are eaten by the analysts, who (generally) don't have enough resources to cover those costs. Due to that, I don't think this model is sustainable or will really catch on.

OTOH, in some (ideal) academic endeavors, having multiple groups compete for more funding or for a prize has certainly benefitted the sciences. In that case, however, the competition was more friendly than zero sum. Also, I believe the different sides tend to share information more than hoard it, yielding lessons learned to the entire group from one team's failures.

One other use case is if you have significantly different weather conditions a short distance from one another. I live near the coastal mountains; a 20 minute drive could take me from nice and sunny to cold and rainy.

Your points about feedback are valid, however.

Does anyone think it could also be useful to tie a twitter feed in with weather information? I feel like weather is one of those things that ppl complain about on twitter all the time; some simple geolocation and keyword matching and you could pull up recent geolocated tweets near you. Could be a nice qualitative weather report to accompany the actual data (people like a personal face on the weather).

If you are really concerned about raising prices (I wouldn't be; I think you should raise them across the board), you could try just charging new clients/users the higher rate. Adds complexity to your system, however.

Edit - just saw the question. The problem right now is not that you don't have a partner; it's that you don't charge enough for the work you're doing. Adding a partner is going to create another set of distractions and issues.

One aspect of self service that I particularly like is the alignment of incentives. I'm incentivized to bag my groceries / deposit my checks quickly, because I want to get out of there. Employees (esp. in low end service jobs) are generally unconcerned with speed or quality, because they're making $6 / hr.

Much of the time I'd simply prefer to self-serve, because it's more pleasant and faster for myself. (Note that grocery checkers don't really fit this category in the States, because they tend to be fairly well paid.)

Agreed, 100%. I've actually bundled a Wordpress install with the necessary plugins and libs (google analytics, basic survey abilities, a/b testing harness). This makes it super easy for me to spin up an ec2 or linode instance. Then I can run a test and make a decision without touching any of my core products/sites/servers.

Not too difficult to do.

It'll be interesting to see how foreign laws (specifically, EU laws regarding privacy) affect taxes. Will future facebooks decide to not incorporate in the EU in order to avoid their (more) stringent privacy protection laws? If so, that could bring more revenue in to the U.S. treasury.