
Goodbye, Ivory Tower. Hello, Candy Store - gist
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/technology/goodbye-ivory-tower-hello-silicon-valley-candy-store.html
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gist
> The same could be true for household goods, Mr. Weyl said. One possible
> situation: After you use your espresso machine for breakfast, a drone comes
> to pick it up, and you rent it out for the day.

A most ridiculous example of 'anything is possible with technology'.

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cylinder
This is all so ridiculous. Easy to throw out fat salaries to do meaningless
stuff all day when you're playing with funny money (everyone has to look busy
to keep selling the story to investors).

We haven't even figured out a way to get people from home to work quickly and
efficiently in Silicon Valley but people are working on maximizing the earning
potential of your coffee machine.

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spoonie

        We haven't even figured out a way to get people from
        home to work quickly and efficiently in Silicon Valley
    

I'd say there is a rational reason for this. If the cost of living was lower
in the SFBA, salaries would likely be lower. By creating remote working
technology or attitudes, an engineer would almost be working towards lowering
their own salary (effectively allowing their jobs to be intra-country-
outsourced to lower cost of living areas).

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stale2002
There are lots of engineers who would be willing to work towards decreasing
cost of living, even if it decreases their salary.

I certainly would. I don't really care if my salary goes down by 10 percent if
I massively help make the world a better place.

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BerislavLopac
And there are lots of engineers for whom working remotely would _increase_
their salary, however it decreased the cost for their employees. If anything,
I'd say that (on a global scale) economic incentives are firmly on the side of
solving the remote working problem rather then perpetuating it.

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spoonie
I don't disagree with the grandparent: there are people who would do it, but I
think for engineers right now the incentives are aligned against it.

And I agree with you, for _employers_ it's definitely in their interests, they
just need to get over the inertia of "bums in seats means work is getting
done".

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jackfrodo
>One study focuses on procrastination — a subject of great interest to
behavioral economists — by looking at bookings. Are they last-minute? Made
weeks or months in advance? Do booking habits change by age, gender or country
of origin?

Airbnb is already making tangible changes based on this kind of data. One
example is using it to make predictions of demand, and then tell Airbnb hosts
the optimal price that they should charge to maximize revenue and chances of
being booked.

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curuinor
There was a man I knew who actually did quit Palantir to work at a literal
candy store, actually (Rocket Fizz, which mainly sells soda but also candy).
Interesting guy.

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dangrover
I have always wondered how that store on University can draw enough sales to
have such prime real estate, figured it was a front for something else.

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lnanek2
Pretty tough to not make money when you are selling pretty much sugar and
water, highly marked up. Soda is incredibly profitable once you have a brand
that sells.

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Element_
I remember once reading that investing in Monster Energy Drink stock 10 years
ago produced a greater return than any of the FANG stocks.

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dvillega
Reminds me of physicists leaving academia to join financial companies.

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flamedoge
aren't they becoming "Data Scientists" now?

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az0xff
That's also true, but you still see a ton of ex-academic physicists on Wall
Street.

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boulos
Aww, my product (Preemptible VMs) got ignored from this section:

> A current market-design challenge for Amazon and Microsoft is their big
> cloud computing services. These digital services, for example, face a peak-
> load problem, much as electric utilities do.

> How do you sell service at times when there is a risk some customers may be
> bumped off? Run an auction for what customers are willing to pay for
> interruptible service? Or offer set discounts for different levels of risk?
> Both Amazon and Microsoft are working on that now.

Maybe we're boring because I fought (and won) for flat pricing instead of
making this auction-based like Spot. We didn't ignore the economics though,
auctions are a great thing for a fixed, exchangeable pie; much less clear for
price elasticity, and an effectively infinitely scalable business.

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maverick_iceman
Very clickbaity headline. I thought a professor has quit academia to open a
real candy store

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Magi604
Yup. The title of this post isn't even the same as the article headline. If I
had read the "Silicon Valley" in the title, I probably wouldn't have clicked
it.

