> I want a commodity, I want a provider, not a platform
That is exactly what the big LLM providers are trying to prevent. Them being only commodity providers might lead them to be easily replaced, and will likely lead to lower margins compared to "full feature" enterprise solutions. Switching LLM API provider is next to no work the moment a competitor is slightly cheaper/better.
Full solutions are more "sticky", harder to replace, and can be sold at higher prices.
Sure a most of these apps are "slop" and will never achieve any kind of success. However a small percentage will eventually flourish into businesses which will eventually starts hiring developers and other roles.
Increased enablement and higher productivity leads to greater output which will eventually lead to greater need for (some types) of tech workers in the end.
I work on a platform that a lot of customers "hate", or at least get frustrating experiences from. With many vocal on reddit, or in the reviews.
As software engineers, we are nowadays actually expected to handle customer service escalations (ie: when customer service cannot resolve a given situation, and the client is persistent enough, or borderline threatens legal action).
Strangely, I found dealing with those these customer escalations some of the most rewarding work. It feels very real as I read the long winded customer support ticket, feeling the user frustration, and finding the root cause and resolving the issue, or at least being able to understand and explain. Afterwards, internally trying and pushing for changes that would prevent the frustrations and escalations is also very rewarding.
I found this more rewarding than some other initiatives we have internally as they sometimes feel less connected to actual problems that are happening and that nearly everyone ignores.
We can already through PayPal, making it easy to unsub. But, guess what, service providers don't like that. Equally they'd not like a bank's solution.
However the payment card companies could handle this by facilitating subscriber to generate a new virtual card for each sub, then to cancel sub, cancel card. They'd need to qualify the current T&Cs which pass a charge through regardless.
"If you'd like to block a merchant and their recurring payments — please go directly to the merchant and ask them to stop recurring charges to your Wise card.
If you can't reach the merchant, or they haven't cancelled your subscription after you've asked, you can block future recurring charges to your Wise card through your Wise account."
I don't think that's standardized, it probably only has some heuristic to detect a subscription's associated payments and rejects them. It will not integrate in any way with merchants to cancel the subscription on their side, and in fact they suggest to first trying to cancel the subscription on the merchant side.
Is "not paying" effectively the same thing as unsubscribing?
I guess they could keep providing you the service and keep track of the debt you "owe" them. Once it becomes high enough they would find ways to claim the money.
Indeed. I tried once with a particularly shady company that required phone calls to unsubscribe. The service after 1 month unpaid, but the money was still owed and ultimately they sold the "debt" to one of those companies that will try to scare you into paying via threatening emails.
This needs to be augmented with a new bit of contract law which enables a new type of 'subscription' where the terms are set by law.
Those terms would include things like "payments are monthly, service automatically ends when payments end, etc."
As things stand today, plenty of consumers end subscriptions by blocking payment, which practically works, but opens the doors to a scumbag company bulk chasing all those unpaid subscriptions through the courts and getting leins on millions of homes for $150 each and templated court cases.
The more I read about recent interviewing practices in the tech industry the more I think I'll just not try and become a beach bum the day I get laid off.
> i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus
Being in a company that has done the gradual cuts, instead of one big cut, I unironically agree. I must have dodged like 15 staff reductions at this point. Company would be in a better state if the decision was taken to go for it big time. Still, it must be hard and shocking - but only once.
I agree. I experienced both setups and the drag was awful for people's morale and internal politics and made the company do really shady things like letting people go before bonus milestones are reached eventhough they were key contributors.
Maybe some type of reputation system could help. ie: "karma" but for github. Increases whenever you make good contributions that get merged, decreased if you submit slop that gets rejected.
One problem with it is that a good contribution might be used even if it cannot be merged directly for whatever reason (although they might be listed as a co-author in that case).
> Businesses don’t do promotions at senior levels because you “deserve” it. They promote those who have the highest potential to deliver outsized impact and value.
What I've seen more of is: people get promoted because they already do the job at the higher level, or close to it
> What I've seen more of is: people get promoted because they already do the job at the higher level, or close to it
That's exactly how it works in my company (small org). They clearly state that the person needs to be doing "the needful" for around a year before being officially promoted to the position.
Genuinely curious - is that not thow it usually works?
Sean Goedecke articulated a different theory of promotion (at large tech companies; it probably does generalize to large non-tech companies and almost certainly won't generalize to small companies):
He said that you get a promotion for one of two reasons:
(a) the company is afraid that, without the promotion, you'll leave; or
(b) the company wants you to accomplish some task, and believes that you will be better able to do it if granted additional political power.
This post seems to agree well with that option (b). It advises that you make the case for your own promotion based on two prongs:
(1) the success of my project is important to the business;
(2) my project is more likely to succeed if I am promoted.
(The post also throws full support to option (a).)
This seems, to me, to be a fairly dysfunctional way of operating, at least as a general rule.
It's far, far too easy for an organization that operates this way to abuse it: oh, you want to be promoted to Assistant Director? Here are all the tasks of Assistant Director; better get doing them for a while and prove to us you can do the job!
...Oh, it's been a year and you want the promotion? Sorry! We just hired a new Assistant Director. Time to train your new boss, because we already know you're great at the job! (What? Oh, yes; that is the Director's nephew, how good of you to spot that! That's why we knew he'd be a great fit.)
> Genuinely curious - is that not thow it usually works?
IME, it's far more common for one of two setups to be in place:
a) If you want a promotion, you have to prove that you've been doing the job you're in very well over a longer period of time—and, in many cases, if you fail to achieve a promotion after a certain length of time, you're fired. (The "Up or Out" philosophy.) In some cases, you don't even explicitly apply for a promotion; if you do well enough in your performance reviews over time, you're just given the promotion, whether you want it or not.
b) If you want a promotion—too bad. We don't promote from within. Well, we don't outright say that. Some people can get promoted from within—they just have to kiss the right asses the right way at the right times. But we'll absolutely expect you to take on the work of your colleagues who leave because the work environment sucks. And your boss, when they leave. But without extra pay.
Doing the job "at a higher level" isn't enough. There must also be a 'bus factor' at play.
Otherwise you're the shmuck who does expensive work cheaper. If you start making trouble and ask for more money you're better off being replaced with another ambitious shmuck who's willing to work cheap without causing trouble.
That is exactly what the big LLM providers are trying to prevent. Them being only commodity providers might lead them to be easily replaced, and will likely lead to lower margins compared to "full feature" enterprise solutions. Switching LLM API provider is next to no work the moment a competitor is slightly cheaper/better.
Full solutions are more "sticky", harder to replace, and can be sold at higher prices.
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