If software could help you hire candidates that are 10% more productive and stay 25% longer (numbers pulled out of my ass) than the candidates you hire now, how much do you think your company would pay for that?
.. that companies love spending money instead of changing anything, so I think they'd spend loads of investor money on it.
How hard could it possibly be to get 25% longer than all the people who say you have to change jobs every 12-18 months? To be nice enough that people stay /four months/ longer??
If that's not happening, switch out the managers.
Or maybe I read too much into it.
This is a very cultural thing. For example, in Germany it is frowned upon to switch companies too often. If your CV shows that you switch jobs every few years, this is considered a red flag since this candidate will not be very loyal to your company.
I also ask myself whether the "company incentive structure" is the cause of switching jobs; if it is easier to get more pay by switching companies than by staying, then of course candidates will be prone to switch. So perhaps not what is broken (in terms of loyality) is "eng hiring", but the incentive structure of the companies that want to retain the engineers.
Do those credentials warrant the adulation he is granted?
But he told us to charge (or be paid) more and probably make us tenths of millions collectively.
In the real world, nobody tells you to charge more or raise your salary.
Your mileage obviously varies, but in my opinion we (privileged "tech" people) need to look beyond just our own personal selfish gains. Yes, earning more money feels good. Yes, the idea that your successful salary negotiation made Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg/Bill Gates less disgustingly rich feels good. But at the same time we should look at the bigger picture.
The above, combined with years of building a positive online presence, and you could see how he ends up in demand.
https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-203...
The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. Someone rich enough to have a $300,000 credit limit probably doesn't want to buy just a $300K house. However... it's easy to imagine the building or construction industry creating a credit card type product for home builders or renovators backed by a credit line sufficient to buy distressed properties.
> Will we see people buy houses online? I mean, clearly yes, we will see that. Will it become dominant to do it without meeting one's counterparty and/or broker? That feels unlikely.
Has Patrick ever even bought a house? Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. As patio might say, "there already exists a non-zero amount of lawyers executing real estate deals without the physical presence of the actual buyer and or seller". I see no reason for the trend to dissipate.
> The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit.
suppose you want to buy a $500k home. You go to a bank and they offer you 30 years at, say 3.5%.
You go to your credit card provider and somehow get a $500k limit. Your payments looks something like 1 (one) month at 0% or as long as it takes (based on minimum payment) at 16.99%.
Which do you choose?
If you think you can change the economics of the credit card to be closer to the bank, you will end up with many of the same overheads that the bank has, and you will no longer be a credit card. I.e., you will not provide near instantaneous access to a line of credit.
I don't see a lot of reasons why we can't eventually have pre-approved 30-yr mortgage credit cards accepted by companies like OpenDoor focused on selling houses.
No, that is definitely not why.
> Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time.
I’ve never heard of this. I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time in a real estate transaction.
Yes, that's my point. When I bought and sold my house I was in the same room as the other private party. We made chit-chat and it was neat, but there was no reason we had to be there other than paperwork convenience. As paperwork continues to move online I don't see why that is necessary.
1. I’d rather visit this site after a few days or weeks and read the answers since the UX of this site isn’t conducive to reading right now. I hate those pop ups on newer answers and questions that hide a big portion of the screen on mobile. Why would I switch to viewing another answer or question while I’m busy reading one already (considering many answers are a bit long)?
2. The other part of this page I didn’t like is that answers are all expanded by default, which makes getting to the next question and answer cumbersome when the one that’s in view isn’t of interest.
I’ll bookmark this and come back much later after (almost) everyone has asked enough questions and Patrick has had a chance to answer the ones he can or wants to.
Great point on the notifications; they're fairly small on desktop but likely too large on mobile. We thought of them as a way to show there's new content if you're waiting for something new, but that does make sense.
We'll keep tweaking it. Let me know if anything else sticks out when you come back to read through the AMA later!
Edit:
Clicking "reply" (again) on the dedicated page expands a text box. It's hidden by default. I assumed clicking "reply" the first time would have been useful.
> Stepping back a bit, problems feel a bit less important to me as time goes on. The world is awash in problems. Problems you care about are just so much more rewarding to work on, and they pull better work out of you. Problems experienced by people you care about quintuply so, because if you start a SaaS business you'll spend much more time talking to customers and getting in their head than you will be on e.g. modeling their workflow in Ruby or optimizing your AWS spend.
> So I'd suggest most people asking this question instead ask "How do I find a user population that buys software that I would enjoy having in my life five days a week for 5~10 years?" My answer for that, after a lot of soulsearching, is "I enjoy helping software people a lot more than I enjoy helping undifferentiated professionals. Maybe I should just do that. Maybe no maybe." Your answer may vary.
