
Caffeine and hangover effects in conversion funnels - awinter-py
https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/03/08/caffeine.html
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Ozzie_osman
Generally agree with the prevalence of short-termism in tech, and not to be
pedantic, but a couple corrections:

"Quarterly profit, for example, can be optimized by selling all your factory
equipment at the end of the quarter." Not if you're accounting correctly. Your
cash might increase but profit is designed to avoid these sorts of things.
Selling equipment is typically exchanging one asset (the equipment) for
another (cash), and so if you firesale your equipment, you'd probably record a
loss (since you'd probably sell it below it's actual value).

"Modern major-generals at successful shops like google want to have data
underneath every button." Actually, of all the big tech companies, Google is
probably the _least_ obsessed with short-term metrics. They're not immune to
short-term focus on metrics, but they still have a "focus on the user and all
else will follow" attitude to product development, and when they do use
metrics, they often try to figure out the long-term impact[1]. Compare that to
a company like FB which has been much more obsessed with short-term metrics
like engagement (though that has been changing recently, out of necessity).

[1]
[https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/43887.pdf)

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awinter-py
this is a well-considered response -- I don't disagree with you, thanks for
taking the time

