Techi Roll

Dear Twitter peeps, make note of yesterday, February 23, 2012. This is the day the Miami Heat saved twitter. Miami saved twitter from complete and utter collapse. It was not an easy task stoping Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks. The win required the Heat’s best effort. A monster defensive game from their undersized center, Joel Anthony. Miami’s Big Three playing like the Big Three instead of The Big Two. Before thursday’s game, Super Lintendo was breaking everything. He was breaking NBA records, breaking down stereo types of Asian male. If the Knicks had won with Lin being Super Lintendo, he would have broken twitter too. The underdog Knicks taking down the villied reigning Eastern Conference Champs, the Miami Heat. The feel good story beating the team everyone loves to hate. A knicks win would have flooded twitter with Linsanity streams. Fans were questioning whether Jeremy Lin, Carmelo Anthony, and Amar’e Stoudemire would mesh and play well together. They’ve been competing together for only three games, compared to Miami heat team who competed for a full seasons plus. Could everything come together so fast for the Knicks ? A Knicks win yesterday would have been against all odds and would have smashed twitter. All rising stars have bad games, all rising stars have their challenges to overcome. Jeremy Lin ceiling is still high. So Knicks fans look on the bright side, your team lost, but at least you still have twitter.

In a few hours we will know the answer to that question. I think we will have a rematch of New York Giants vs New England Patriots. Baltimore Ravens defense is good but they don’t have a great pass rush, they got a great running defense, but the Patriots don’t run much. It’s been said before by many analyst it’s going to be hard to cover the Patriots receivers and tight ends. Anquan Bolden is good but Joe Flacco does not have enough weapons. In the Giants game, as long as Eli Manning is healthy, I don’t think this is going to be as close as some people are expecting. The Giants have the most balance offense out of all the teams remaining in the playoffs and the defense is peaking at the right time. The 49ers struggled against a Saints team that had 4 turn overs. A better defense would have double teamed Vernon Davis and let someone else beat them. Well that’s my pick, let see what happens.

Amazon Fire tablet just made Apple ipad more desirable. If you’re saving up for an ipad you’re not going to say I’m getting the Fire tablet instead, you’ll keep saving. All this talk of it being an ipad killer was all hype. Most consumers will see it as a cheap tablet. Very few will perceive this as a better tablet than the ipad. Amazon fire is smaller and cheaper, but not better. It’s not even a viable alternative if you want 9.7” tablet. Amazon obviously think Apple has made the best 9.7” digital tablet money can buy. Amazon’s offering is definitely not more appealing to musicians, especially guitarist. As a guitarist It’s great that I can use Apogees jam with Garageband on the ipad and create music with it, you can’t do that with a Kindle Fire Tablet. To say Amazon’s Kindle Fire touch is a direct competitor to Apple’s ipad is like saying a Toyota corolla is a direct competitor to BMW’s 5 series. It may sell well like Corollas, it serves a want, but It is not an ipad killer. Amazon essentially made the Toyota Corolla of tablets.

Too many people are blaming technology for the lack of jobs. No doubt technology is killing some jobs, but it has also added many jobs to society as well. Now people are making the argument that technology is killing net jobs as a result shrinking the economy. 

Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth.

-Jeff Jarvis

This argument is wrong because it ignores the impact of war and corruption has on our economy. The economy can’t grow when trillions of dollars are lost to fighting wars and bailing out wall street. Inefficiency does not add value to society, technology never killed a job that is of great value to society. Advance technology has not replaced the highly skilled worker, craftsman, engineer or artist. 

….Just when you thought you couldn’t take “journalism” lower than the work of article chop shops like Demand Media, it sounds like Narrative Science has figured out how to do a good job of having a computer generate timely news stories for sporting events, stock market news, and company announcements. Throw in self-driving cars, even Foxconn replacing factory workers with robots, automated stock trading, and you have to start thinking about the future of work….at some point, we’re going to have to start thinking about how to put people to work, rather than how to put them out of work.

-Tim O’reilly

Although I agree with Tim O’reilly assessment that we should be thinking about how to put people to work, in general this quote is an overreaction to technology killing jobs. Narrative Science software only has the potential to kill the simplest and routine part of journalistic work, simple reporting of available data. What Narrative Science does not do is replace the writers and journalist who break stories, do investigation and research, journalist who provide their own unique and refined delivery and writers who provide their own interesting opinions.

All the other jobs Tim mentioned are not great jobs, these are not the jobs we were told to aspire to attain as kids in school. Factory work is a boring job that pays the bills, If people had more creative options that pay as well, they would do it. Stock trading may not be boring but people in general lose money trading stocks(see: reasons why should never own stock again), If current software can do a better job at trading stock and not lose money, then we should use computers.

Foxconn may eventually replace all the factory workers with machines. But foxconn only manufacture the tech devices for companies like Apple. Apple won’t replace their engineers and designers with machines. Because Apple understands the value of human creativity and ingenuity.

Great products, according to Mr. Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing. -  NY Times quoting Steve Jobs.

The whole range of human consciousness and experiences is integral to the best work we do. We don’t fully understand every single aspect of our consciousness so we cannot compile what we don’t know into a software algorithm. Technology is only good at killing dull and repetitive jobs that requires no creativity, ingenuity or problem solving. Technology is great at killing jobs people really don’t want to do. Developed countries require their young people to study humanities and the sciences for at least 12 years in public schools. Yet the best society could offer a high school graduate is a $12 an hour job, stacking books at borders ? Did we take all those tests, did all that homework so we can work at boring and repetitive jobs at factories ?  Jobs that are being killed by Technology are jobs that can be accoplished by an adult with a 5th grade education. The public school system and higher education has a problem because we have a deficient work force with limited options.

But even if we fix education, we won’t fix the job problem as long as the Government is spending trillions of dollars on war, billions on fraud and even more billions bailing out banks and wall street corruption. People are making a mistake blaming technology. We have less jobs for many reasons beyond the scope of this blog. Blaming technology is not going to solve the job problem, technology never killed a job worth keeping.

The tech scene  is abuzz with the Startup Genome Report. The report found that “In 90% of failed startup cases, 70% failed because they scaled prematurely.” But that did not surprise me, insightful but nothing new here. If you’re one the many attentive and bright readers of signal vs noise you’ll remember that 37signals have been writing about premature scaling for years.

I keep hearing about “scaling” issues. Will this scale? Will that scale? Our software is scalable. Etc. But there’s another kind of scaling — human scaling. And that’s the expensive kind. A lot of these new companies that are springing up already have 10, 15, 20 people on board (or are headed there soon). Those are big payrolls for companies generating little to no revenue. And when you have little to no revenue and you have 10, 15, 20 people on board, you have to start borrowing. And when you start borrowing you start going into debt. And when you start going into debt, you can’t continue to innovate or take chances. And then decisions are made that aren’t in the best interest of your customers. It’s a slippery slope. A slippery downward slope.- Jason Fried

Jason Fried said the above in 2004. It should be obvious, when you’re in a startup you want to make decisions that are in the best interest of your customers. Based on the study, typically inconsistent startups, (startups likely to fail) had 3 times more employees and more money in the efficiency stage than those who succeed. The effiencey stage is defined in the report as a time period where startups refine their business model and prove the inefficiency of their customers acquisition. Some say having millions of dollars is a good thing, it gives startups time improve on their business model, however the study showed the opposite. The research showed inconsistent startups had more than enough employees and cash and still failed. Speaking about startups with more cash than insights, David from 37signals said:

 When you have a lot of cash, you can delude yourself for a very long time and still pay the bills. There’s nothing that will bring realism into your world as quickly as realizing that you’re out of cash. That is a smack of real life that will instill sense in almost anybody. 
- David Heinemeier Hansson

A Visual.ly infographic based on the Startup Genome research study.

Having more money in the efficiency stage and a large team to start did not prove to be an advantage for internet startups.

You don’t need tons of money or a huge team or a lengthy development cycle to build great software. Those things are the ingredients for slow, murky, changeless applications. Getting real takes the opposite approach.  - Getting Real by 37signals

37signals thoughts on product development are also accurate. Startups who wrote more code and spend most of their time on product development were more likely to fail.

We believe software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much to learn. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We build products that work smarter, feel better, allow you to do things your way, and are easier to use. - 37signals

 The report notes that inconsistent startups write 3.4 times more lines of code during product development. A competent coder who writes simiple software with less features won’t write unnecessary code.

Now it appears that 37signals is in the so called scaling stage and they are adding a lot more employees and spending a lot more money, like the study suggest successful internet companies would do. They started with a handful of craftsman now they are approaching forty in head count. They use to share an office space now they are using a custom built modern and beautiful office space. So for those who think of 37signals as just being lucky, for those who think they can’t learn from them, think again. Internet startups can learn how to win from 37signals. 

discuss on hacker new

edit: The original article title was a total fail so I changed it.