
Some problems are so hard they need to be solved piece by piece - swohns
http://cdixon.org/2012/11/23/some-problems-are-so-hard-they-need-to-be-solved-piece-by-piece/
======
netcan
Interesting. It seems like there's some good discussion over the past few days
on hunting ground for good ideas. Everything is rightly disclaimed with a "not
guaranteed to produce a good idea."

Moving people from general tools to more specific ones is tricky. Most of the
things people use spreadsheets or email for could be done with more specific
tools, possibly better. Time tracking, data storage, project management,
scheduling. General tools that you are already using have a lower overhead.

I can guess at 2 big gotchas. (1) To move people to narrower tools you need a
very big improvement. Slightly better isn't enough. For a lot of things there
just isn't that much room for improvement. (2) When you move from general to
specific tools the software dictates how the user does stuff more. This leaves
room to get it wrong.

~~~
adrianc
Have a look at <https://pinad.com.au> \- it might be the big improvement you
speak about. It has structure and specialization for each of 81 categories
currently available.

I described a bit more in a reply to the main thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824233>)

Disclaimer: I'm the creator of pinad.com.au

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tarr11
Has anyone had a good experience hiring via StackOverflow Careers? I've found
it to be expensive, and it doesn't necessarily provide more or better
candidates than craiglist, Indeed or LinkedIn.

~~~
alainbryden
I was always afraid that by putting my profile on StackOverflow Careers,
prospective employers would see us as individuals liable to spend company time
solving other peoples' problems online and therefore be less likely to hire
us.

~~~
swohns
Good point, I find it kind of unnatural to transform a developer community
into a recruiting platform. I think it's just companies searching for a
solution to solve the resume problem.

~~~
d0m
It's also an incentive for developers to earn karma as it may reflects on a
career opportunity. Other popular developer websites, such as github, also
have a way to differentiate /popular/ or strong developers (number of
stars/fork). Personally, I prefer the github as a developer and a manager
mostly because I'd feel more comfortable working with an employee that crack
lots of code rather than one who spend lots of time answering questions.

~~~
zem
as a developer and a manager, i'd love a guy who could productively answer
questions. it means that he can both solve problems and help other developers
who might be struggling with the same issues.

this is the kind of developer who will make sure his code is commented from
the perspective of letting someone else see how it works, and that your
internal dev wiki is well gardened. if you ignore the value this sort of
person can add, it is entirely your loss.

~~~
rizzom5000
I think I'm with you on this one. Crappy code can still get a lot of
stars/forks and great code can pretty much get ignored if it's not the flavor
of the month with the majority bandwagon. I think Github is great if you want
to look at someone's code, but being able to successfully answer questions,
while more academic than utilitarian, in general identifies those with a deep
and thorough understanding of the technology. SO gets gamed though.

Ultimately, I suppose that either are a good bet if you're looking for someone
who stands out in a certain way. In both places you should vet the quality of
the code or quality of the answers. And if you're the type of employer who
uses these as metrics for rating candidates, then I think you should also
probably give your employees time to work on their Github projects/SO profiles
(I didn't intend the irony there, but it's there all the same).

------
F_J_H
Interesting. As someone eluded to in the post's comments, the "horizontal" can
almost be thought of as a platform in some ways, where "vertical" are the
individual product(s).

So, if the "platform" does not exist yet, it may need to be built first, but I
suspect many of them already exist. It's interesting to think of what
horizontal platforms are being developed, or are becoming more popular, and
how you could target a vertical area on top of (or within) it.

I've seen a few discussions recently on Google Glass and the work Microsoft is
doing augmented reality area as well, and wonder what vertical products could
stem from that over the long term.

~~~
d0m
It's very hard for a startup to create a platform without a main popular
product. It may be proven wrong, but in my opinion (and experience), it's
better starting vertical and then horizontally expanding. Existing companies
with revenues can afford wasting resources for a while and trying to attack
each market individually.. but a startup?

~~~
RyanZAG
Feels like you should take the advice even further for a startup. A startup
shouldn't be going vertical or horizontal - a startup should be picking one
individual problem to solve and focusing on only that.

Horizontal is close to impossible for a startup. The budgets involved don't
usually allow for focusing on more than one product market at a time.

Vertical is also very hard. The startup would need to be in at least two
different businesses to go vertical. Lots of IT/web startups do try this by
being in both the infrastructure business and the software product business,
with half of their startup aimed at creating new methods of managing servers
and data, and half on providing some user software on top of that. There are
lots of success stories here, but you have to assume there are lots of
failures also who went overboard on building up a vertical where they didn't
need the whole vertical to solve their actual startup goal.

Basically, I'd say in the same way a mature corporation is one that pays out
in dividends any money that they can't get good return on, a mature startup
would be one that focuses only on a single core business goal of some kind,
and fails quickly if that business goal doesn't work. Vericals/horizontals can
come after the startup phase and the business goal is met.

------
orangethirty
I remember the first time I sat down with my C64. That thing was quite scary.
Full of buttons that had weird symbols written on every face of the keys. It
had a disk drvie that would make _drruuuun prrub drruuun_ sounds while the
little light flashed. Boy, did it looked busy. The power button was nowhere to
be found by this 7 year old. The cables? Where do they go? Little by little I
kept breaking down each issue I faced. Its funny how things never change. One
cable went here, the other there. Turns out someone was smart enough to make
the cables fit in one way only. Then I found the power button after hitting
every possible key on it. Luckily I had managed to plug it in before doing
that. The monitor came alive and suddenly I had a working computer in front of
me. Little did my oldest brother know that unplugging it would not keep me
from using it.

Then came the issue with not knowing how to use the thing. I did not speak or
read english and the manual was written in it. What was PRINT? GOTO? Well,
that was for me to find out. Turns out, I still use the same method. Break up
everything into pieces and work with each piece at a time. I do miss that C64.

------
Detrus
But this multitude of narrow solutions creates a marketing and usability
nightmare for users. What's the hip place to rent rooms now? And how do I use
it, because it has no UI consistency with services for renting cars and
objects.

So even if these services have success, it's hard to out-market a go to portal
for trading/renting between individuals. Without a unifying interface they'll
merely coexist with Craigslist.

~~~
lumberjack
That's true but the problem might be smaller than you think. I have no stats
to show but how many people visit more than three or four sub sections of
craigslist.org? I personally only use two.

Besides, what is lost in UX compatibility and uniformity might be gained in
important features that greatly improve the service offered. For example,
Odesk has immensely more usable features than the computer gigs subsection on
craigslist.

~~~
Detrus
Yes but who will find Odesk? How will you tell it apart from a bunch of
competitors and ZenDesk?

You're limiting Odesk's fancy functionality to the small subset of experienced
computer users. Even if you only use 3 subsections of craig that's 3
O/Zen/StandingDesks you didn't have to Google for, memorize stupid names of,
compare to competitors and learn where they put buttons.

That's assuming some marketing or universal interface magic doesn't fix it.

------
adrianc
Probably the vertical approach started from a need to have better search and
be able to describe a certain type of object/activity. Think about it for a
minute: to be able to search you have to be able to describe what you want. To
be able to match a description you need to have a structure in place (e.g. the
attributes of a car is a structure).

Sites like Craigslist offer a GENERIC way to DESCRIBE MANY objects/activities
therefore they offer a GENERIC way to SEARCH for many objects/activities.
Sites like AirBnB offer a SPECIALIZED way to DESCRIBE ONE TYPE of
object/activity and they have a SPECIALIZED way to SEARCH for that one
object/activity.

What if we have a SPECIALIZED way to DESCRIBE MANY activities/objects and a
SPECIALIZED way to SEARCH for MANY activities/objects?

That's what I'm trying to do at <https://pinad.com.au>. Currently I have 81
structured categories and hundreds of attributes and options. All of them
allow a specialized description and a specialized search. Would this be a
better alternative for a centralized marketplace?

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mlchild
Think we're likely to see a similar pattern with Facebook—seems clear that the
instagram acquisition happened because they were scared of someone capturing
the photo-sharing "vertical" better than they do.

------
namank
EVERY problem ever solved was solved piece by piece - steam engine happens
when it's steam engine time.

The only exception is the moon-landing, I'm still trying to figure that one
out.

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hcarvalhoalves
Craigslist is the epitome of the "worse is better".

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hayksaakian
On the other side, picking a category that's too specific ties you down to
that niche, and can limit the potential of your startup.

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jacques_chester
This fits with the observation that the structure of production is constantly
deepening and specialising.

No matter how niche your field is today, it will eventually break up into
smaller, more specialised fields.

And someone will move into that specialty.

This is a _good thing_.

------
icewater
Someone was browsing Adult.

