FOMO is disastrous for company strategies | Hacker News Reader

FOMO is disastrous for company strategies

rubenugarte.com

82 pointsrubenugarte87 comments

The other side of FOMO is appearing as the US transitions to a shortage economy, like the former Soviet Union. It used to be that if something was popular, more of it would be made, and then the price would go down. Now, if something is popular, the seller is likely to restrict the supply to push the price and margins up. Buy now, while you still can.

Cars. Houses. AWS S3 space. Meta's VR headgear. Meat. Most of the toiletries and drugs CVS and Walgreens sell.

Meat is interesting... when I read this at first I was taken aback, thinking that while there might be 1-3 years lag in producers responding to demand, surely meat is nearly a pure commodity without market power being involved?

Then I remembered slaughterhouses:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2021/12/10/rec...

"Comparing the fourth quarter of 2021 to the same quarter in 2020, that same firm increased the price of beef so much—by more than 35%—that they made record profits while actually selling less beef than before."

This is the future we have brought :`)

Data analytics and JIT often leads to an invisible cost to the lower class.

I remember the days where my parents would go to the meat store and make some random thing off schedule. I remember when I was starting my career and would be able to make do with the 'use it now' discounted meats.

Now, not nearly so much.

The problem with these improvements is twofold:

- They impact impoverished people, which are more likely to be dependent on such discounted items.

- They 'hide' inflation cost.

Monopolistic pricing and anticompetitiveness has little to do with JIT or data analytics

I would disagree.

JIT and data analytics make it a lot easier for the maximalist market exploiting capitalists to get to the monopolistic pricing and anti competitiveness, and they can get there a lot faster.

I can just go buy a meta headset on their store, it's been that way a while I dunno if I would say there's a shortage there lol

Other headsets are more difficult to buy yea but the meta one is very much available

Meta recently announced a $100 price increase. So they are able to increase prices without lowered supply. It's not entirely clear why but fits the pattern of popular -> price goes up.

that is not the part of the parent comment I’m taking issue with though!

Things like cars -- and especially houses -- are in a different category than some random piece of hardware or a bit of server space, though.

With limited exceptions, no one is making more land. So there's a hard limit on the supply of cars and houses, at least until we manage to cover Mars in shopping malls and billboards.

>a hard limit on the supply of cars and houses

There is a regulatory limit, sure, but the literal parking lots - not garages, lots - visible from my downtown apartment begs to differ that we are anywhere close to a hard limit on the supply of houses.

The United States has a nearly infinite amount of unoccupied land. What's required is the political and social will to incentivize people to build.

And a relatively flat population. "Peak baby" was years ago. Most of the developed world is below replacement birth rate.

That's irrelevant, we are not going over there in Nigeria, India, Pakistan etc. they'll come over here in the developed world.

It's not even a matter of policy or politics or us vs. them...it's gonna happen, like gravity happens.

It makes sense to be prepared.

Except much of it is in places that are relatively hard to access, have no amenities, have exceptionally harsh weather, and may not have sufficient water to sustain a population. It's also stuck in the catch-22 of no jobs, no houses.

> The United States has a nearly infinite amount of unoccupied land. What's required is the political and social will to incentivize people to build.

The vast majority of that land is not where people want to live. Building houses there won't change that.

China tried it and failed in several cases, but succeeded in a couple of cities.

And when the typical voter who owns their own home votes in their best interest, they vote NIMBY. If you incentivize scarcity, scarcity is what you will get.

Change needs to come from above the system, not within.

Most home owners do not want their house to drop in value because there's more housing being built and available. I feel bad for the people who bought in at the top, but they're really pulling the ladder up behind them if their vested in their home value appreciating.

Your examples do not match what you said. The sellers aren’t restricting the supply of several of these items. Externalities are

Where is the evidence that suppliers are purposely restricting supply? This would only work if there was zero competition for a product.

That's actually not happening at all and seems to completely ignore the volume aspect of profit.

I would love to have whatever problems Google has, and if FOMO is how Google got to be/remain Google, please yes give me lots and lots of FOMO...

My point is that maybe one of the most successful companies on the planet might not be a good example for illustrating "disastrous company strategies".

I do agree, generally, with the article FWIW.

What is `FWIW`? For What It's Worth I guess?

Yes

Google did not get to be where it is via FOMO.

Definitely not. They started with a good idea for search, and then they acquired a really good approach to selling ads. Everything else is a sideline, and most of those sidelines have lost money.

I assume FOMO means ”fear of missing out” in this context, but the article never actually spells it out.

It's a very common acronym that I hear in ordinary daily conversation, and its usage has passed that of the original phrase. Easy to Google, too.

There is not much that is more annoying than an author assuming the reader knows the acronyms that they want to use.

This particular case isn't as bad as others, but especially when getting into any sort of technical conversation it's wildly frustrating to see multiple acronyms used with no indication of what they stand for. Then you go to look it up and there's like 29 results that fit the acronym, half of them being plausible.

I was always taught to use the full word/name/whatever the first time it occurs in writing and immediately provide the acronym in brackets (I've also seen vice-versa, which is fine), then feel free to acronym-soup the rest of the text. I sorely miss when that was the rule, now that it seems like it is the exception.

> There is not much that is more annoying than an author assuming the reader knows the acronyms that they want to use

Sometimes you're not the intended audience and that's okay too. Constantly explaining acronyms that everyone in the audience uses daily gets frustrating too.

Imagine if every article written for senior software engineers in VC-backed companies had to re-explain what PR, CI, VC and AWS stand for. Or if every article for American audiences re-explained LA, NYC, and EST.

Jargon is useful.

When I write, I typically DO spell these things out.

> We accepted a pull request ("PR") for our continuous integration ("CI") server. As a result, CI will now automatically trigger a canary release instead of the old blue-green deployment process, except on AWS where canary releases are not supported.

Note that there's no real interruption to the flow of the writing, as I only spell it out the first time it is mentioned. Nor do I stop to explain what "pull-request" means -- the full name (unlike the acronym) is enough to perform a search on the topic and read about it if needed. And I don't do this universally: everyone I know uses "AWS" instead of "Amazon Web Services" and even pronounces it that way in conversation, so I don't bother explaining that one.

You also don’t bother explaining what canary releases are. Which is weird. Who is your intended audience with that example? Is this some imaginary audience who knows and cares about canary releases and blue-green deployment but somehow missed out on PRs and CI?

You can at least easily Google "canary release" I suppose, in a way that's going to give a clear answer vs googling "PR" or "CI" (which will likely tell you PR means public relations and CI is the symbol for a "curie"/unit of radiation).

but it would be impossible to google FOMO...

Not sure what your point is, I'm defending not spelling out things that are easy to google. FOMO and "canary release" both are, while CI/PR, not so much. In principle if you were writing something for an audience that may or may not have heard of continuous integration or pull requests, at least spelling them out makes it easier for them to look up their meanings. I don't actually think it's a big deal either way, though it's surprising how often people use abbreviations and just (incorrectly) assume others know what they mean. If you're writing on any sort of interactive platform, being around to explain them if asked is probably sufficient though.

> everyone I know uses "AWS" instead of "Amazon Web Services" and even pronounces it that way in conversation, so I don't bother explaining that one

Maybe that’s how this author’s bubble feels about FOMO.

I for one don’t think I’ve ever heard the full version of “FOMO” in conversation. Similarly to how everyone I know says “pee-arr” and may not even remember it’s short for something.

I just wanted you to know: You are completely correct and everybody arguing with you is wrong.

>Constantly explaining acronyms

Writing out an acronym one time in your paper/article/blog is not "constantly".

>Sometimes you're not the intended audience

Often times I run into this issue when I am the intended audience, but may not be familiar with the trendiest acronym to describe something. Or I'm familiar with 2-3 uses of the same acronym and am not sure which one is applicable.

>Writing out an acronym one time in your paper/article/blog is not "constantly".

Exactly, and neither is it explaining.

I don't get what the big deal is, "fear of missing out (FOMO)" is just four words extra, once, and you don't need to write an essay on the etymology of the term or something. It just ensures we're all on the same page and when it's not clear to someone they can google it. Do people not know how many overlapping abbreviations there are? It's almost like the acronyms are shortening the words somehow to a smaller representation that is not necessarily unique.

> Writing out an acronym one time in your paper/article/blog is not "constantly".

I think you mean "your paper/article/weblog (blog)"

You really got me there!

But clipping isn't the same as acronyms, mainly because a clipped word is (generally) easily searchable whereas acronyms are shared across several domains and will sometimes overlap inside a single domain, which is the source of the frustration for me.

My dictionary has a definition of FOMO which is more nuanced than just spelling out an acronym, and it has a pronunciation which is not just the letters said one at a time.

So in this case I think spelling out the acronym is neither necessary (as articles typically needn’t define moderately well known words) nor sufficient (as the term’s meaning is more than just the expansion of the acronym).

Technically (by the original definition anyway) it's not an acronym unless you can pronounce it as a word. Most of what we call acronyms these days are "initialisms". Some of them are almost never used in speech anyway (I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 'FWIW', for instance - it's more 4 syllables than what it stands for!).

/ˈfəʊ.məʊ/

Guess it’s an acronym.

Yes, that was my point - technically it wouldn't be one otherwise.

This isn't even a technical or business acronym, it's a common colloquial.

It's used in mainstream television advertisements like the FOMOH ads by the NHL (fear of missing out on hockey).

FOMO is probably as well-known as other acronyms that aren't explained every time they come up: IRS, LGBT, DMV, MLB, NYC, etc.

And, really, if you don't know it, you just do this:

CTRL+T define:FOMO ENTER

I mean, we're already in a web browser...

But here we go, now we're deep in an HN thread about something so incredibly trivial – it really is true that our day jobs are bullshit if we've got this much time to kill on this kind of discussion. (I'm unemployed, what's the rest of y'all's excuse?)

I said this one isn't much of an issue, didn't I? But it's related to a bigger complaint of mine, which has had non-trivial consequences in the past, so I talked about it.

But that bigger complaint didn't come up in this case, so why are we talking about it?

It's not like the article dives into terms like SE, ICP, AE, CSM, or anything like that.

"Non-trivial consequences," lol, cracks me up. Won't anyone think of all the lost productivity?

Are you the comment police or something?

I replied to someone talking about not spelling out acronyms by talking more about not spelling out acronyms.

I don't know much more on topic I could possibly be.

Sorry if I offended I guess? I'll try not to discuss things as much on this discussion board.

Actually, I'm your boss. My unemployment story was a ruse! Get back to work!

"IRS, LGBT, DMV, MLB, NYC, etc."

IRS & DMV are very US-specific (I do happen to know what they mean, but I'd venture many non-Americans wouldn't). I have no idea what MLB means...

(looked it up - if it's referring to baseball, well then, again, somewhat US-centric. Though I am surprised I've never heard it called that, vs, say, NBA, which long ago gained international recognition.)

> (I'm unemployed, what's the rest of y'all's excuse?)

I'm in a meeting right now :-)

Ah, so we share a similar level of productivity!

I swear the acronym BOGO appeared ex nihilo three years ago. I’d literally never seen it before then and was very confused about what it meant, and still am convinced it’s an acronym that a marketing firm invented to sound hip. (buy one get one for anyone out of the loop)

BOPIS went from the back-office (is that even a word anymore?) to consumer marketing during the pandemic, too..

What's BOPIS?

Buy Online, Pick up In Store.

>I swear the acronym BOGO appeared ex nihilo three years ago.

No, that just happened a moment ago. :)

I am familiar with the concept; just not familiar with it as an acronym.

Here in Tampa, so close to the birthplace of Publix Supermarkets, we are born knowing to seek out BOGOs.

BOGO as a shopping term has been around as long as I can remember.

Merriam-Webster is reporting that the first attested usage of BOGO was from 1983, but I had never encountered the term until last night when my wife used it in conversation! It confused me so much she had to finally say "buy one..."

Then I got to explain bogo as a prefix in computing and chess before picking nits like "shouldn't it be BOGOF" (typical HN commentor that I am)?

BOGOF was definitely enough of an established term here for ads that were making fun of the term in a meta sense while sharing their offers to have existed in the 90s.

I've never seen it as just BOGO though.

First time I see it. Had it been used in a HN comment, I would have ranted about people inventing acronyms on the spot and expecting everybody to know them. I live in England and I've never seen it before.

English is the lingua franca of the Internet, but this example shows that some acronyms are not as global as people might think. I guess BOGO (buy one get one) might be commonplace if you shop in an American store, but anybody else that doesn't live there might not have had exposure to it before, and get quite annoyed. Same with stuff like GOP (Grand Old Party) or even DUI (Driving Under the Influence). Americans on the Internet just love to drop their three-letter acronyms on an international forum.

Acronyms are context and location sensitive. One should refrain to use them on the Internet unless you can expect anyone who's reading you to know then (i.e. FBI, WHO, UN)

I have a public collection on GitHub of "technical" acronyms with their definition for this reason: https://github.com/d-edge/foss-acronyms

Unless this is a very recent edit the second paragraph starts with:

> I was surprised to hear how much FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) my friends were experiencing.

I had also forgotten what FOMO stood for but thankfully the article defined it above the first page fold.

It was edited. Previously the article did not spell it out.

Ah, that makes more sense.

The multi-armed bandit problem[0] is an interesting example of optimizing a reduction in FOMO. Basically you need an intelligent way to assess a good use of limited resources.

0. https://towardsdatascience.com/solving-the-multi-armed-bandi...

I think FOMO is a great strategy instead.

The point is FOMO-ing first, that is not in envy or in fear of missing out what other people are doing, but FOMO-ing because you see something in Nature or the structure of the marketplace (or both) which is an untapped opportunity.

Big tech is not FOMO-ing enough against Nature nor the Market. Each of the big tech companies have lost the willingness to put distance between themsevles and other big tech companies, maybe they are afraid of D.C. the DOJ and the whole Sherman Anti trust but at some point you have to be willing to go Super Nova just to experience what it feels like.

Google and Meta could be the ones to actually go and decide to go Super Nova, that's because of the double class shares which enables Page , Brin and Zuckerberg to call the shots without having to answer to investors who are clearly opposed to the concept of going Super Nova because it throws instability in their portfolios.

Why do you spell Nature with a capital "N"?

Why do people spell God with a capital G? Or Universe with the capital U?

The entity or thing that holds up all the secrets deserves respect. Whether you think it's a guy dressed in white with a long white beard or an ethereal entity like Nature.

That’s exactly why I capitalize the “M” in Money.

FOMO explains 95% of Web 3 / NFT strategies had by companies that should really know better.

I was going to say this.

It seems as though larger companies are typically those who fall prey to FOMO strategies, but many of them do successfully usurp smaller companies' markets simply by copying features. Sure, some of those features flop, but that doesn't make FOMO disastrous. Ex - after Snapchat launched stories, every tech company tested a copy. For Instagram, the copy was wildly successful, even if it was a relative failure for FB, LinkedIn, etc.

I guess this is a lesson to Clubhouse that has built it's whole company around FOMO and its invite system. It turns out you weren't missing anything.

Just another hype train that got overheated by a16z and the other smaller VCs that tried boosting the platform and it ran out of steam after it was copied to death and the poor delays and the disastrous release of the Android app.

Now not even the VCs want to use it anymore and have instead moved to YouTube.

cough Meta cough

Definitely a good example, although you can extend it to so many. In the US if you say "tech" people suddenly scramble to you because everyone is afraid of betting against you and becoming blockbuster.

Ex: Wework is another one. Many of the big rich real estate families in NYC all were heavily invested in it. None of them wanted to be the dinosaur left behind even with a company that was claiming to be "tech" without really being tech.

I'd argue that WeWork's strategy was a disaster itself. FOMO into disasters is one thing, FOMO - AFAIK, was not a WeWork strategy.

It's a good lesson to learn for life - we have so many options these days that we can run round trying them all - a better more systematic approach would help

FOMO is often disastrous for personal strategies as well, career strategies or otherwise.

This is a difficult problem in many SaaS verticals, I call it the “Oooh problem” because your target audience on social media is always saying “Oooh” to every new product and feature they come across and it’s one of the reasons that software gets so bloated, full of checkbox features.

As an entrepreneur it takes an enormous amount of patience and discipline to not get sucked into building for Oooh People.

but the metaverse will surely prove otherwise, just wait!

Counterpoint: FOMO is great marketing strategy for companies

Why?

Because people buy more products and make company more profit in less time.

Mostly people buy product in hopes of flipping it for some quick bucks ( some try to become long term collectors ) and mostly people do this to "stay in loop" and "not fall behind the curve".

You mean inducing FOMO on others?

Quite a predatory kind of marketing, but I can believe it makes companies give you more money on the short term.

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