afian

Unfortunately the sad truth is that any good writing on the internet these days is going to be drowned by a tidal wave of SEO optimized slop. The other unfortunate thing is that LLMs write better than most people I know, so the number of people using LLMs to write, even when the purpose is to inform or persuade, will only grow.

Afi Labs | Sales Associate | REMOTE (US) | Contract or Full-time

Afi Labs (http://www.afi.io) is a software consulting company that specializes in building software for transportation and logistics companies. I'm looking for a part or full-time sales associate to sell route optimization software and APIs to grocery delivery companies, tech forward logistics providers or larger fleets that would benefit from truck routing.

The ideal candidate would have either worked at a route optimization provider or is deeply connected to the last mile delivery industry (e.g. you've sold software or services to third party logistics providers). Email afian at afi dot io if this sounds like you.

As a previously "mediocre, but not completely incompetent, graduate student" at a top research university (who's famous advisor was understandably frustrated with him), I consider this a huge win!

I run a software consultancy (http://www.afi.io) that specializes in transportation and logistics software. Please get in touch with me at afian at alum.mit.edu.

Here's a recent case study from one of our clients: https://www.mapbox.com/showcase/sotargruppen

I also write widely on anything related to software and logistics: https://afi.io/blog

I won't tell you whether you should build or buy, but I'll tell you what to avoid.

Avoid - large system integrators like IBM. They will charge you a lot of money and then just outsource it to someone else (source: me, we occasionally do subcontracting work). - freelance engineers from a website like Fiverr. You want someone who's done this before, many times, and has seen what worked and didn't work. Logistics is very niche, and outside of a few speciality dev shops you won't find engineers who have experience solving real world customer problems. There are really good engineers at Waymo for example, but they won't work for you (or me).

There a quote attributed to the late Charlie Munger. When asked how he would select a future investment manager for Berkshire Hathaway, he replied, "It reminds me of the young guy who went up to Mozart and said, 'I'd like to write symphonies.' When Mozart said, 'You're too young,' the young man replied, 'But you were young when you started.' Mozart pointed out, 'Yes, but I wasn't asking anyone else for advice on how to do it.'"

You want someone who's done it before.

Fantastic product and excellent team!

Something that doesn't get mentioned enough on technical forums like hn is how past a certain point, it's not tech that matters - it's sales, which is why in a larger company salespeople and employees who work well with salespeople tend to do better than engineers. If the company through hard work, technical prowess or plan dumb luck achieves a monopoly on whatever market it sells to before the best engineers leave, rising revenue and prestige at the company can mask the underlying rot and eventual demise for years and years, during which time better sales processes or accounting tricks are more effective than better engineering.

To whoever from Reddit corporate that is reading this - you’ve done something bad and unnecessary. The new “mobile optimized” UI is slow and buggy. The net result is that I’ll use Reddit less instead of clicking on more ads on your new site.

This might be interesting to the hn crowd. I was an expert witness for a big lawsuit in California where thousands of newspaper delivery drivers were systematically underpaid by a major US newspaper company (https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article2613374.html). The delivery drivers did not keep records of which customers they delivered to, but given the customer manifest and subscription data, I was able to use route optimization (which I learned in school at MIT) to calculate a baseline for how much they were paid. link: https://afi.io/case_studies/callahan_blaine

edit: since people asked - I was paid well in the range of a few hundred k. Totally worth doing the math homework in school.

Excellent work! But I’m biased having worked at DRL and senseable.

So happy and proud I know these people - they are amazing!

I know these people! They are amazing :)

From the warren buffet autobiography ...

“What about Kodak? asked Bill Ruane. He looked back at Gates to see what he would say. “Kodak is toast,” said Gates.8 Nobody else in the Buffett Group knew that digital technology would make film cameras toast. In 1991, even Kodak didn’t know that it was toast.9 “Bill probably thinks all the television networks are going to get killed,” said Larry Tisch, whose company, Loews Corp., owned a stake in the CBS network. “No, it’s not that simple,” said Gates. “The way networks create and expose shows is different than camera film, and nothing is going to come in and fundamentally change that.”

“You’ll see some falloff as people move toward variety, but the networks own the content and they “can repurpose it. The networks face an interesting challenge as we move the transport of TV onto the Internet. But it’s not like photography, where you get rid of film so knowing how to make film becomes absolutely irrelevant."

Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itun.es/us/hj_bz.l

Excerpt From: Schroeder, Alice. “The Snowball.” Bantam Books, 2009. iBooks.

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Hello - will the new 3rd edition come with an updated screencast series? How will you price the screencast + ebook bundle?