Execs can't do this themselves because they don't have the information they need, and are trying to be predictable and compete in a market. So think about it as an ELI5 exercise where you're infantilizing up, or as it's more commonly and professionally referred to, managing up, or more plainly, helping the business make better decisions.
Helping the boss convince the market he made better decisions.
I often feel the frustration when I'm writing some data-crunching report-extraction thing, of the knowledge that the output of it will be some administrator squinting shrewdly at it and thinking himself better informed. Then he'll do pretty much whatever he would be doing anyway.
And that's the better case. I suspect in many cases they don't look at the information they ask for at all.
Maybe with a shitty boss and a complacent environment. Help them not squint at it and make a gut decision. Why not instead ensure the objective of the report is clear, there's a meaningful target around which to hinge on a decision, and present the data in a way that helps make the decision? And in lieu of the time or resources to do that, work on those problems?
Or building things that help retain current customers vs acquire new customers so sales has something to sell.
The bigger problem as I've seen it is engineers that don't see themselves as part of the business, either because of the culture or personal choice around lack of focus on soft skills.
All too often engineers spend zero time understanding the market and customers, and scaled agile, as it's typically implemented and managed, definitely doesn't help.
> All too often engineers spend zero time understanding the market and customers,
From my perspective the problem is that companies invest zero time in training engineers about the market and companies, and instead just treat engineers like assembly line cogs that produce business value on-demand.
Upper funnel/lower funnel, depending. And don't forget the future employees that take notice of a culture that would allow for such an exercise. To me, it communicates good product management, roadmaps, and healthy financials to allow the room to breathe.
You're making a lot of statements across all your comments that are not backed up and easily disproven, and you double down with more of the same so it's not particularly valuable to engage.
I think with a little critical thinking you can take your "the only" or "is about" statements and ask yourself if you can think of exceptions. You can, and easily.
Chicken and the egg. You can't really make people not want cars without better alternatives, which requires investments that aren't being made.
I want a car, because I need a car. But put in a few bullet trains and offshoots, a business model for vehicles that enables access to a $100/month consumer fleet of shared vehicles so I can grab a truck, minivan, whatever as needed, and I will happily skip ownership.
This is a fantasy. In general, people don't want a shared vehicle. If they did, everyone would own a 5-year-old Toyota Camry, and not luxury pickup trucks, sports cars, Mercedes and BMWs, etc.
The idea that these people are just sheep blinded by marketing is ludicrous. You might spend $5 on a beer instead of $4 because of marketing. You buy a $60,000 new vehicle over a $15,000 used one because it's a good product that you actually want.
To contribute some rough anecdotal evidence, when I look out the window next to where I'm sitting this exact moment I see a mix of newer and older Honda Civics, Toyota Corollas, and some older SUVs. Judging from the age of those cars, I'm going to guess that most of their current owners bought them used and not new. I do not see a single pickup truck.
I'm not going to debate that the Ford F150 dominates new vehicle sales in north America, but that's only accounting for the preferences of people who are buying new vehicles and doesn't track what the used market would buy if given unlimited options.
As for the marketing argument, there's plenty of discourse surrounding it. Most new pickups are sold with short beds and extra features which make them impractical for use by many commercial trades that do use pickup trucks. There's a question of whether the F150s popularity is because of the truck's utility or because of the aesthetic desires of purchasers.
in places where people don't need to buy neither a $15 or $60k private automobile, they don't buy any of them, they just ride the train or a bike like normal people do
visit tokyo, paris or any other transit oriented city and see for yourself
What is it? I opened it up but it kinda throws you right in. Lots of recordings about being lonely. Is that what it's for, or was that some kind of prompt? Is it a mental health platform? Or is it meant to be more general, like a Twitter/Reddit but audio only?
Agreed, the site would benefit from clearly answering, "what is this and why should I care?". I poked around for a minute (most people will give it 10 seconds) and my impression is that it's sort of a digital lonely hearts club, or a global party line.
They do write: "We are on a mission to end loneliness"
I don't know, it's a noble goal, but I don't really see it being something to build an income on. Not everything has to have a commercial angle, but you need to pay for hosting and you need to pay yourself a salary. If the last few months have thought us anything is that you need to have a plan for monetization (whatever that means to you).
Voice connections without the element of vanity (photos, videos) can allow for authentic connections between strangers that texts cannot convey. It is what we believe in and first-hand experienced on our app.
We first want to achieve the network effect so that the platform has value to users, then we do have some premium features in mind that we can serve to enrich the experience of power users.
Thank you for you answer, it's nice to see that there's a plan for you to pay yourself in the future, and one that doesn't involve ads or "big data". Best of luck.
It is the web-demo of the app that we have.
On our iOS and Android app, we have onboarding pages that guide you what our mission is, and how to use the app.
Sorry if the web-demo interface felt abrupt!
The goal is to facilitate people forming authentic connections using their voice in today's day and age where we are flooded with vanity-focused photos and videos and easy-to-misinterpret texts.
So far, the response from the actual users have been really great. I suggest you give it a try to connect with someone online1
Just some feedback, I'm really thrown off that literally every conversation I can see just says something like "Hi, I'm lonely and this is why".
I don't understand what this is / it just feels like a survey for really short sort of useless replies to a survey on loneliness.
If the goal here is to just show a snapshot of one example of how this system works, you may want to have a modal or explanation saying "This is just an example, download the mobile app to see the full experience and other conversations".
