I’ve long considered the phrase to be feel-good noise; is that so atypical? It presumably has some effect, or people wouldn’t use it so much, but I would be amused (and disinterested), and possibly a little concerned, if anybody tried to sell me on something because of that phrase alone.
Of course, a lot of it comes down to context. If somebody tried to sell me on a job by telling me I’d help to “change the world by producing computers than anybody can use and everyday families can afford”, then that would definitely be more persuasive than either “come work for us, and change the world!” or “come work for us, making hardware and software is fun!”. Even though there still isn’t a real milestone defined, there’s a discernible goal and it’s a goal that I see value in. The fact that it’s described as a “change the world” goal doesn’t make it invalid, although you have to figure out for yourself how much of a change it would really be when deciding how important the goal is.
I agree the phrase isn’t used in complete isolation, but
A) I feel like even then we should come up with more specific phrases
B) there’s very rarely an analysis or philosophical understanding after it.
C) It’s often used with a lot of other vague terminology.
“producing computers than anybody can use and everyday families can afford” is a good example actually. That’s about as specific as I hear companies talk. What I’m looking for is something more like, “We’re aiming to maximize this axiomatic value system, which we believe we can do by producing computers. We believe we can get these machines to be less than $50 per person, which is expected to sell approximately 30-100 million machines for people making between 10k and 30k in the United States. The computers are expected to provide a benefit of increased income of 10-20% for people in this bracket. Given that we will use less than 50 people to do this, this comes to an expected benefit of $25 million saved per person, which is a better benefit than other competing ideas we considered”
If one is claiming they are doing good, I would like for them to have an idea of how and why they are doing it. I realize that this is difficult, but it definitely seems like a good direction to me.
I’ve long considered the phrase to be feel-good noise; is that so atypical? It presumably has some effect, or people wouldn’t use it so much, but I would be amused (and disinterested), and possibly a little concerned, if anybody tried to sell me on something because of that phrase alone.
Of course, a lot of it comes down to context. If somebody tried to sell me on a job by telling me I’d help to “change the world by producing computers than anybody can use and everyday families can afford”, then that would definitely be more persuasive than either “come work for us, and change the world!” or “come work for us, making hardware and software is fun!”. Even though there still isn’t a real milestone defined, there’s a discernible goal and it’s a goal that I see value in. The fact that it’s described as a “change the world” goal doesn’t make it invalid, although you have to figure out for yourself how much of a change it would really be when deciding how important the goal is.
I agree the phrase isn’t used in complete isolation, but A) I feel like even then we should come up with more specific phrases B) there’s very rarely an analysis or philosophical understanding after it. C) It’s often used with a lot of other vague terminology.
“producing computers than anybody can use and everyday families can afford” is a good example actually. That’s about as specific as I hear companies talk. What I’m looking for is something more like, “We’re aiming to maximize this axiomatic value system, which we believe we can do by producing computers. We believe we can get these machines to be less than $50 per person, which is expected to sell approximately 30-100 million machines for people making between 10k and 30k in the United States. The computers are expected to provide a benefit of increased income of 10-20% for people in this bracket. Given that we will use less than 50 people to do this, this comes to an expected benefit of $25 million saved per person, which is a better benefit than other competing ideas we considered”
If one is claiming they are doing good, I would like for them to have an idea of how and why they are doing it. I realize that this is difficult, but it definitely seems like a good direction to me.