There are (and I know this is surprising to many peers) a lot of people who are acutely sensitive to complexity/difficulty/mental effort required to get through things.
We understand this in B2C conversion optimization and industry spends $$$$.
Meanwhile, the process of getting a vaccine is largely not optimized from a conversion perspective.
Indeed, partially through underinvestment and partially *as an intentional rationing measure* the process is often pessimized.
Sometime after the pandemic is over, when writing about what went less than awesome, I want to write about the game theory of having N distribution systems with fungible supply, overwhelming demand, and the overwhelming incentive to *not* have the best site.
That’s a very “you’re going to want to have a stiff drink and possibly a pillow to scream into” conversation.
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Similar jobs to be done (active trading as an entertainment product); good insight on how traditional brokerages with risk appetite would think of fees.
Also fun to hear people from very different worlds allude to very foundational views that they treat as axiomatic but that their counterparties don’t understand at that level.
Most prominently, when asked about the risks of crypto, brokerage said “What do I care? Cash product.”
Meaning: because they do not offer leverage on crypto, they do not have to do the risk management they have to do on options trades, leveraged stock positions, futures, or shorting stocks.
They never take credit risk regardless of market conditions or user behavior.
Day 93 for VaccinateCA.com and I've got the update baton again.
We did again today what we do every day: call many potential vaccination locations and publish what their medical professionals tell us.
Lots in the works right now:
We're continuing to iterate on how we expose our data set to publishing partners, working with them to make both the data and the UX as valuable as possible to their users.
If you'd like to see some results of this work, and live in California, Google [covid vaccine near me].
We haven't talked about that one much, but quietly getting Google Maps the data they needed to launch that feature is one of the most impactful things we've done to date.
More stuff is in the pipeline; not all shareable yet, as is frequently the case.
PSA: If you’re an engineer and have not done the job search thing in a few years it may be time to ask Mr. Market what prevailing wages are, because the answer may surprise you.
That has been good advice over much of the last 15 years but, according to a number of conversations I have had recently, is particularly good advice at the moment.
The roaring bull market for equities and vast pools of capital coming into tech (at every level) have mechanically pushed up some parts of compensation, companies have adjusted, etc etc.
It’s very much a jobseeker’s market at the moment.
General availability for the vaccine, and believed-to-be-sufficient supply (e.g. "doses for every person in X"), is not the endpoint for either the vaccination campaign or the pandemic, and is much farther from the endpoint of both than it is broadly believed to be.
Supply is hyperlocal and often non-fungible. From the perspective of many people who we need to vaccinate, much vaccine which we believe to be available and routable is as effective as vaccine stored on the surface of the moon.
We have some limited (and intentionally underexploited) ability to move demand around systemically but have functionally no ability to move around shipped supply and extremely limited (and intentionally underexploited) ability to retask future supply.
Insurance underwriter: I mean check the tables; senior systems engineers are great risks. Negligible all cause mortality, inclusive of automotive accidents.
Company: What about competing job offers?
Insurance underwriter: Oh eff everything about that; you're on your own.
*sigh* While that makes a good joke, "key man" insurance policies are a real thing, but they're largely not used for line employees, even very critical line employees.
"Would that cover case of employee leaving of their own volition?"
If you're willing to pay for it, maybe.
A "key man" insurance policy is taken out by a business (as the beneficiary) against always the life and sometimes the health and availability of a person indispensable to the enterprise, to transfer a difficult-to-otherwise-control high-hazard low-probability risk to an insurer.