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There are some parallels between your critique of this startup and what educators critique about ed tech startups. Mainly that the tech comes first and the cont
by bunbunbun 4y ago
There are some parallels between your critique of this startup and what educators critique about ed tech startups. Mainly that the tech comes first and the context that tech is supposed to be nested in is unacknowledged, leading to failure or other issues. I’ve been starting to wonder if incubators and CS programs need to teach units on founder humility, domain context, and social context so we stop wasting so much cash on reinventing wheels.
- whyifwhynot 4y ago> reinventing wheels. I consider 'reinventing wheels' to be a valuable educational experience, I often wonder about how could educational 'enterprises' (universities, and education companies?) leverage this to improve what they do, but then I remember that it doesn't matter what I think, just what I do, and I sure do not work for any such companies. But it's kind of silly that "we" (as a society) are spending 300k USD to teach some of this "obvious" things to some random group of well connected americans. then again, the dollar is made up so long as 'the future' pays back these money-creation loans we may as well spend the money this way. the alternative is going back to corporate backed research, instead of this strange contemporary VC-backed research
- solarmist 4y agoI agree with you. Reinventing wheels is good, ignoring any kind of domain knowledge/expertise is not. If you’re running into problems that someone with a year or less experience in the area can point out and you don’t have good reason to do different then that’s incompetence not ingenuity.
- xapata 4y agoIt's a human problem, not a technologist problem. I've often been asked by a business manager to create a website or other software in support of a new business process that is still in what I'd call the hypothesis testing phase. I encourage them to create content for it, first, and if they take my advice, half the time they realize the process won't have enough throughput to justify it.
- profstasiak 4y agocan you recommend some books?
- xapata 4y agoBooks about quirks of human behavior? I suppose behavioral economics books, like those by Daniel Kahneman, might be good.
- cauthon 4y agoAlso true in biotech, see also xkcd 1831 https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/ Humility is the key trait that many CS grads are lacking. Personally, I attribute it to the explosion of CS popularity since ~2010. Most bio majors are still nerds (and I assume the same is true for education), whereas I think a minority of CS grads these days are motivated by passion and curiosity.
- ghaff 4y agoMost bio majors are probably pre-med.
- duped 4y ago> I’ve been starting to wonder if incubators and CS programs need to teach units on founder humility They actually teach the opposite, since humility doesn't bring in funding.