nasalgoat

Here in Canada I worked at a company that had free alcohol on Fridays, and it got to the point where people would invite their friends - non-employees - to come and drink. They'd all get so blackout drunk they'd pass out in the lounge and the customer service staff would have to climb over them on Saturday morning to get a coffee.

That particular perk was removed after a couple of months.

It's still dot sublimation printing versus screened artwork. It looks good but you can't get the spot colours like you can with screens.

To be fair, since the Logitech Harmony One went EOL there hasn't been a decent remote available from anyone.

Yes but they get very lonely all by yourself.

The channels I'm talking about weren't about work, they were about hobbies - biking, cars, cats. I found that interaction quite fun and actually much better than in-person chats because I could choose to interact at my pace and comfort level.

I worked at a large fully remote company and it had dedicated topic channels you could join. I thought that was an excellent solution since people could discuss their interests with other employees without it seeming like a corporately mandated chat break.

I now work for a much smaller company and I miss the chat channels.

For our app we front-loaded the list of accounts with the most "popular" users (number of likes, messages) within their criteria when people signed up. So the sort order was always "hottest" first then everything else.

This was to get people to sign up so they could chat.

People would get the most "success" with those closest to their own level but that did not result in subscriptions at the same rate as putting the hottest up front.

Just one of the many ways the apps don't work the way you expect.

I was a founding member of a dating app startup and worked there for 10 years until it filed for bankruptcy. I have some insight.

The number one reason dating apps suck is money, or the ability to make money is antithetical to the purpose of getting people together. A dating app is successful when people don't use it anymore, so that user churn is a serious impediment to earning a profit. Thus, the apps are designed to keep you paying that monthly subscription.

In that same vein, apps have to work way harder than websites to turn a profit because of app store fees. Our app would have been profitable if we didn't have to give Apple 30% of our fees, so we had to do way sketchier shit to increase profits to compensate.

Second problem is the wildly unbalanced male/female ratios in users. We had one of the better ratios in the market but it was still 70/30 male to female. Straight men and women simply do not have the same motivations around dating and trying to balance those is a hard problem. There are many videos out there about this problem, no need for me to go into detail.

Third is reach. We spent a lot of time trying to find ways to advertise or optimize for store placement and the restrictions placed on us were almost puritanical. For instance, Facebook wouldn't let us advertise because our relationship settings had "married" in the list, so we were forced to remove that option in order to place ads on Facebook. There were other compromises we had to introduce in order to qualify for other stores or advertisers.

Lastly, the Match Group is the 800lb gorilla of the industry and they buy all the good ones (OKCupid, Plenty of Fish) and grind them into maximum profitability like a hedge fund, thus removing any distinctiveness they had in favour of the Match methods.

What it comes down to is the ecosystem is gamed to make good datings apps impossible.

Sorry, when you're applying to a dozen jobs a day, it's hard to put that personal spin into it.

I know you think you're a special snowflake that's different from every other company out there, but looking for a job is a grind. A tough one. Why make people dance and sing even more?

People are TCP but Society is UDP.

"Albums" on the Photo app and the iPhone aren't the same either. That one actively irritates me - why are they different? They're both Apple!

That was never really true - I used to make plenty of cash refurbishing machines, playing for a bit, and selling them off. It can get pricey if you're trying to source unique parts for low-volume games but the vast majority of wear parts are generic and not that expensive. Mostly games are just dirty.

If you buy them brand new, you will never put enough plays on them to get them to the point they'll break. They are well made.

But that said you do need a certain level of handiness unless you plan to call the distributor to come out and fix it if it does break, because even new games will break occasionally.

There's a reason that MM has been at the top or in the top ten most popular machines since it came out in 1997.

If you'd ever talked to a pinball designer you'd know that their primary goal, without question, is making a fun game. No designer ever designed a game with coin drop in mind, except for things like appealing to a broad audience.

Fun games make money. That's all you need.