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Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back
MattSparkes writes "Cuil may only have launched this week, but it seems that they're already enjoying late-'90s boom-style comforts. 'Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbeque, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.' Seems like an awesome place to work, but how long will their $25 million VC funding last at this rate?"
Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back
First of all, a single anecdote does not prove anything. If you included eBay's Skype deal or Google's YouTube deal ... wait, scratch that last one. See, there's constantly non-prudent business deals and every now and then you see a real whopper.
Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbecue, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.
Do you think that this is what caused the dot com bubble? Do you think the vast majority of people were living like this when it burst? I'm no economist but I thought that the problem wasn't with how the IT and Web Site companies were spending their money but rather what the customers they found were giving them money for--basically nothing. A few HTML pages? Not even worth my time to read?
$25 million in venture capital is nothing these days. Let them burn it. Yeah, we'll all be laughing a couple months from now when they're busting their asses to find some income--or maybe they are correct in thinking they are the next Google. Hell, Slashdot ran a story reporting them to index more than Google. With the kind of press they achieved, maybe they're right to live like royalty for a bit?
Does anyone look back on Google and say "They hired a massage artist? Proof the bubble is back!" No, because they thought they were going to be big and they were.
You want to prevent another bubble? Don't take a job where you're not sure how you or any of your coworkers draw revenue from real customers who in turn receive some service or product that makes complete sense. That's how you prevent a bubble. And unless you're part of the 1% calling the shots on how to spend money, you needn't worry about how other companies spend their money. This frivolous spending should just make it easier for Google to beat their bottom line and steal customers back. And if they can't, well then let Cuil rake large piles of capital together and set them afire to their heart's content.
My work here is dung.
I know that many people will say that perks like these are only positives because they can only make people happier about their job, which is good for the employee and good for the employer as well.
I would like to suggest that it's not all roses in reality. I have worked at places where the employer provided lots of cushy perks and I found that it tends to attract a certain type of employee: the type who wants the job not because they like the work, but because they like the perks. In my experience this type of employee is not the best for the company; and what's worse, the general working environment tends to become antiproductive even for employees who otherwise would be more productive.
I have found that in Silicon Valley companies, there is almost a sense of pride taken in how unstructured the working environment is. The "cool, hip" companies are the ones that encourage their employees to engage in nerf gun fights, have parties every Friday, and generally play around on company time. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that these companies can be globally competitive, but maybe companies all over the world are all doing the same things.
I personally believe that there is a fine balance between too much carrot, and too much stick, but that the answer certainly does not come from throwing the stick out completely. I am most motivated when there are expectations of me, and I have worked at companies where expectations are disturbingly low. I honestly believe that most people, even if they won't admit it, need a bit of structure in their working environment to be most productive.
There is definitely a desire for people to believe that the best working environment is the one where the employer puts the least demands on its employees and gives all of the best perks possible, and that such an environment would make everyone more productive if only employers weren't so pig-headed and could just realize that ... but I think this is really wishful thinking. It actually worries me that software companies in the USA are often like this because somewhere there must be companies that Just Get Shit Done (India maybe?) without all of the frivolities and eventually, they're going to dominate. And I want the software industry in the USA to stay healthy because that's how I earn my living.
By the way, I think that it would be hard to out-cushy Google. Their campus is like Club Med and I have a hard time believing that they get anything close to maximum productivity out of their workforce because of it.
Posting AC because obviously I don't want my current or past employers or coworkers to somehow get word of this and get pissed off at me.
" how long will their $25 million VC funding last at this rate?"
Based on my late 90's Start up runs in NYC, I would say the Doctor and Free Gym Personal Trainer will be gone in two weeks, the food in a month, and 75% of the employees in 3 months.
Stories like this may even bring PuD back to F**kedcompany postings.
Awesome!
From my experience with using Cuil for a few days, it is utterly and completely useless in its present form. Yes it's nice visually, but it's a search engine got heaven's sake - visually pleasant is nothing if the searches don't return anything useful.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
It sounds expensive, but if there's 10 employees, that VC funding could last years.
Google set a precedent for perks, so it's only natural that companies are going to try to repeat that success for recruiting purposes alone.
body massage!
There are a ton of companies out there that offer free snackies, gyms, on-site doctors, etc. For the most part they are prudent financial decisions. free snacks: the cost is VERY minimal compared to the good will generated and assuming it's stocked internally, you don't have to allow an outside vendor in to stock machines improving your security. gyms: healthy employees cost less to insure. healthy employees miss less work. healthy employees are more attractive and will lead to improved workplace chemistry. healthy employees impress customers. on-site doc: employees only need to take 30m off work to see the doc instead of having to get in a car, drive to their doc, wait, wait, wait, see doc, drive back to work which is 2 hrs minimum. so, while a lot of these really seem excessive, they aren't.
Be on the front page of /. every week, boosting their add impressions.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The only carrot I have ever seen is a paycheck, everything else is a stick.
Cuil Sucks. Seriously, it sucks real hard.
I liked their privacy policy and thought their approach to searh results was unique and fresh, it just needed a bit of getting used to.
So, I have tried using it in place of Google since it was announced.
I gave up today in shear frustration.
Take me home Google! I missed you so!
This signature is lame.
Not sure if there is bubble but one thing I did learn about during the Cuil-crash-and-burn-at-launch fiasco was a new search technology out of Cambridge that is in beta right now. It is named true knowledge, and uses natural language strings for search, and wiki style user submitted knowledge base in conjunction with a standard search engine. It is pretty neat and promising search technology that I found searching after looking that the shorcomings of Cuil. I highly recommend getting a beta account at true knowledge if you are interested in improving search results in a fine grained approach.
But if we are smart, we can still make money. I recommend selling short on Google now.
I recommend not taking stock tips from /.
Unless of course enough of us get together and actually move the market in the direction we want. /.ers don't have that kinda cash on hand.
But I suspect
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...for financial institutions. I work at a Financial Firm in NYC, and we don't even have coffee makers in the kitchen! And they took away the vending machine. Bottled water has gone up from $12 for 2 cases to $16. I've been reduced to filling up my bottles at the sink, and shorting Google. If you're a Shadenfreude, you've enjoyed this post.
Regardless of the cost of any perks they may enjoy there, a search engine company needs to have a search engine to live. To me, cuil appears to be a quick hack without the huge index it claims, and without a decent ranking algorithm.
As an example, I did a search for my home town (a really tiny place, 1000 people or so). The top 10 google results included the towns unofficial homepage, a googlemap centered on the town, the wikipedia article for the town, a couple of weather sites with forecasts for the town and so on. All relevant, none repeated.
The first page of cuil displayed *seven* "find hotels in $town" (believe me, there are no hotels) or "find single women in $town" (same story there...). A lot of these spam sites were even repeated five or six times among the first results. A japaneese version of a result was listed higher than the english version of the same result, and so on.
I just left a company (unfortunately) that had lunch catered daily, stocked drinks, had a heavily-used foosball table, and (un)officially had flex time among many other benefits. This company happens to be a market leader with no debt and VERY profitable revenue stream.
The company was fortunate to have certain events happen at opportune times, but the benefits were needed to lure a skilled workforce into joining the team. Cuil will probably fall flat, but the "excesses" are warranted IMO.
:-( If I didn't have to relocate, I would never have left.
But I suspect /.ers don't have that kinda cash on hand.
But they could easily get some. Not legally, but round off a few fractions of a penny to a bank account and if you get caught, the worst they would ever do is they would put you for a couple of months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! Shit, we should be so lucky! Do you know, they have conjugal visits there?
I have a bad feeling that all of this is going to bring us to a conversation that involves the phrase "pound-me-in-the-ass prison"
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
It's a bit messy but it's something like this...
1) barrow some stock from some and promise to give it back in the following few(i forget the longest you can do this for) months.
2) Sell it.
3) Wait for said stock to fall.
4) Buy it at what you hope is a lower price.
5) give it back to the owner.
It's called selling short because you can only have it sold for a 'short' period before you have to buy it back again. Basically you bet that said stock will fall. As strange as it sounds it's fairly common in Wall Street
Naked Short Selling (while we are off topic) is doing the same thing, but borrowing the same "stock" several times (since you have a short time before you actually have to hand over the paper) and creating "virtual" stocks that you then sell short. Absolutely destructive and devaluing of stocks. For a little audio discussion, I think it's this link
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
But I suspect /.ers don't have that kinda cash on hand.
But they could easily get some. Not legally, but round off a few fractions of a penny to a bank account and if you get caught, the worst they would ever do is they would put you for a couple of months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! Shit, we should be so lucky! Do you know, they have conjugal visits there?
I'm a married man, and I haven't had a conjugal visit in 6 months.
It's not messy (as in complicated) and it isn't strange. It is just a way to bet that a stock will go down. No stranger than a put option.
I am not sure where the terms "long" and "short" come from, but I don't think that short has any relation to what you are saying. You borrow the stock for an indeterminate amount of time. The entity loaning you the stock has the ability to ask for it back at any time.
It is uncommon because, unlike owning a stock/being "long", you have unlimited downside risk. If the stock keeps going up, you lose more and more money. Also, there has to be someone willing to lend the stock.
As always, Wikipedia:
Short selling
Put option
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Cuil isn't overspending. I've been over there. They only have about 30 employees. They didn't overdo the server hardware, either.
Bringing in lunch makes sense. They're on a quiet suburban street with only one modest, overcrowded restaurant nearby. Cuil is too small for a cafeteria. Bringing in food saves considerable staff time compared to sending everyone out for lunch.
That's not the problem. The search results are the problem, of course.
I'm a married man, and I haven't had a conjugal visit in 6 months.
That's really unfortunate. Your wife is awesome in bed.
Absolutely destructive and devaluing of stocks.
Funny, The Economist covered short-selling this week and discussed why selling, even naked short-selling, is good for the markets. Hmmm, who would I trust - the 150-year-old Economist, the best newsmagazine in the world, which is staffed by people who've forgotten more about economics and finance than the best MBAs ever learn, or...NPR, staffed by Vasser socialites whose dads contributed to political parties. Hmmm.
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