goobynight

You pay for "close" to it, but no chat app is going to have 100% uptime at scale.

Seems obvious to me. Most companies will take the most unreasonable customer complaint and ask how they can fix the customer's boo boo, with a smile.

Meanwhile, a reasonable complaint from staff could be seen as an uprising of the working class.

You can also think of it this way: when 15% of your staff leave, you at least don't have to pay them. You get a 100% discount on 15% of your old headcount. Maybe you take some of those savings to bribe other staff to pick up the slack before the replacements come in.

If 15% of your customers leave, that's just money gone and you're stuck holding the bag on everything from inventory to leases, to salaries, and your own idle time.

Is picking on one of the better games in the already limited fighting game genre really our target?

I'm glad I had the chance to live and work in HK from summer 2016 -> Fall 2017. It wasn't the best place ever, but I'd hate to see it lost.

Seeing this is crazy.

As for diversity, it's a unique mix. Notable quantities of French, British, Americans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Thais, Indians, and locals. Indonesians and Filipinos are obviously insanely marginalized, as domestic helpers, but they were cool to hang with on their 1 day off per week.

So, this will fund ~2-3 people over the next 3 years. That's by my estimate.

Agreed, but insert an equivalent hop without alcohol and you'll see what I mean.

Both of these are true. I can't believe anyone thinks that my hobbyist purchase affects the transportation business model of Bird. That's like thinking cars are putting buses out of business in Chicago.

I've also rented a couple Lyft scooters out of convenience, as you said. They certainly feel worse, now that I'm spoiled, but the convenience of just dropping them off is a huge win.

Me dropping cash on a scooter was just an interesting aside. I'm one of two people in town I've seen on a personal e-scooter.

Most people don't want to own. It's less useful for bar hopping and you're on the hook for maintenance/repairs/charging/storage. I'm more handy than the average person that rides these. The average person living in downtown Denver likely doesn't even own a set of tools.

A rental business is much more attractive to VCs, if they can make it profitable. Has a niche retailer has ever received VC attention? Honest question. That doesn't feel like it scales like nearly on demand rentals.

No way is it the bulk of the funding and I bet VCs do well on the aggregate, which is why they are using their services. These institutions would all abandon ship.

Until the CA pension goes bust due to VCs, I'm still OK with what they do.

It's a product tons of people do/will use in every city in the US that doesn't require physical presence, aside from chargers on contract.

How many products can you say that about?

There are only a few things nearly everyone wants: food, housing, transportation, utilities, sex, clothing, medical care, hair cuts, google search.

Nearly all of those require constant in person staff and/or have a ton of regulations. The exception here is Google, which is why they are killing it. Google search-and software in general-makes money while people sleep and doesn't require linear addition of staff to scale.

Other stuff that people buy: e.g. video games, movies, trinkets, rock climbing gym memberships come down to people's personal taste and they might even want some variety (e.g. making a sequel). Everyone wants transportation though and they're OK with the same thing every day, as long as it works.

This is a case where they are taking something with absurd demand and looking for the profit second.

I'm a Denver local and like them a lot. So much that I bought my own premium model for $2500. Cars, even if they are in designated parking spaces, are even worse litter to me. They are everywhere and get a free pass.

As for the waste, it's not like Bird is funded by people's personal retirement accounts. Nobody invested is getting a fast one pulled on them. The money didn't vanish. The VC goal is to take a massively scalable idea and see if it is possible to find profit in it. This is clearly scalable, so they're testing it out and seeing if they can find a formula. For better or worse, VCs are members of society.

A 3 month period of the police targeting this property crime would be awesome.

Even harder to find ones that wish to remain working for a startup!

Turns out people don't actually need much, so "need generation" is way more profitable.

What part of basic economics tells you this?

I could think of a few ways that this makes total sense.

$50 is $400 in an 8 hour day. There are places where $1000-1500 covers you for the month, even with non-local, white guy pricing.

My hourly comes out to "only" $20/hr more, but my apartment alone is likely a few hundred more than this guy's entire monthly expense profile.

He's going to get consistent work at this price point, so he won't have to hustle for contacts. That's more time billed or spent on the beach.

Stepping away from the economics and getting into comparison to Google/FB engineers, there are tons of people that could outproduce many Google engineers in a startup setting. They just aren't good at Leetcode problems or never took a shot at FB/Google. A lot of stuff just works as an engineer at Google that you don't get for free elsewhere. They're good at leveraging the output of some truly amazing engineers across their org. They're also generally overstaffed.

Right. Imagine teaching most people to pipe "ls" into "grep", even without any flags. You've already lost double digit percentages of people.

I just don't think the new housing is coming...ever. There's too much money tied up in the real estate to devalue it. People save up for a long time to get some of that property. They aren't going to want a price cut to happen after grinding it out. I'd be pissed if I had just come into ownership. As much as I'd love it for my own gain, I don't even consider it an option on the table.

These people would never afford whatever becomes available in an open market anyways. Cut the prices a bit and it'll be me moving to LA and I can outbid anyone living in a car out of necessity.

So, we're left with trying to make constant concessions just because people were born here (well, maybe) or we can cut them loose until they move.

If I can grow up in the Midwest and move away from home (nearly all of my hometown friends too) to progress my career, people can pack it up to progress their lives. There was no government intervention to keep families and friends together in the Midwest. Probably because we weren't addicted to Ohio.

People born in LA that can't make it either squandered a huge head start being born and local to LA or their family screwed them by staying in a bad situation and should have moved decades ago. What is so sacred about being born there? Their local friends/family are letting them live out of a car or a tent. What love will be lost?

They can't afford to live where they were born. Deal with it. It's over. Grind out a year or two in the heartland and move back with a better job if you really miss it that much. I don't think that's too tough of a pill to swallow.

> That leaves most people living in vehicles without a legal place to sleep.

In LA, that is.

For the estimated $20-30 per night the article states this might cost, we could get these people into actual housing in the midwest.

Until they've tried that, I don't really care what problems people in LA have. These people are addicted to LA/California.

We're eventually going to get over trying to let everyone live in the most popular cities in California and we'll be better for it.

Building software wasn't what I was talking about. They've obviously done that.

I'm talking about the sheer amount of software and people that support those efforts now, in addition to how much profit comes from it. Surely it has grown by more than say...5x.

His point is that their competitive salaries, regardless of their numbers, make other companies, with profit, up their offers a bit.

Instead of getting a small slice of the pie, we get a small slice plus a few percentage points (that perhaps we should already get). That's huge for most people that aren't financially independent or even close to it.

Not sure it will be the same. 2008 was not just a regular business cycle recession. That was a huge event that I agree would be devastating.

Tech work is much more diversified now, right? Did capital one, starbucks, nordstrom, Walmart, Target, car makers and just about everyone have a sizable SWE team in 2001? They do now and a lot of those are probably in profit center roles.

That sets aside that big tech really got even more cemented into daily lives after both of those crashes. 2013 onward IMO. Just looks at how Tinder has changed relationships.

That said, I'm still proceeding with caution and don't have a self-assurance that I'm correct. I've set myself up to be able to peace out for a year in Vietnam or another cheap place if, somehow, the floor falls out.

Cool.

Thank you for at least questioning this nonsense.

Video recording law is probably the worst combination of misinformation and actually coming up in someone's life.

I'm not buying it. What companies are you thinking of? I feel like I will either find them seeking out a generalist for some subset of their workload or a company that is just as young and valuable that hires massive numbers of generalists (e.g. Uber, Postmates/Doordash, WeWork)

A general studies major doesn't ascertain that you have a basic competency in any desirable skill.

The kind of generalists we are talking about actually have the competency to at least make MVP quality work in a few areas.

I don't think there is a spec, but looking at an image of a b-2 versus the image in the article should give you an idea to start with.

This thing looks sick. I wonder if any savings will make its way to the customer.

> Passenger comfort is also taken into account.

That could mean just about anything, fwiw.

I'm from the Midwest and feel the same way. SF and the like are for people looking to ladder climb. If people just want to survive, it's almost too easy in the Midwest. Struggling in Cali is a choice.

Pack a U-Haul and go.

I've never seen the latter even once.

It's a classic thing people interject when it isn't relevant.

You nearly cannot discuss housing costs in Florida or Indiana on the internet without someone from SF feeling the urgent need to say "lol that would get me a cardboard box where I live".

Why they feel the need? I don't know.