We just posted a full course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel that will teach you the fundamentals of finance & economics for businesses. The course is designed to empower you with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate this complex terrain.

Sriram Chundi created this course. He previously taught the course to students in-person, and now brings it to the world through the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel. The course offers an in-depth exploration of the fundamentals of business strategy, finance, and economics. By delving into these three interconnected domains, students will gain a holistic understanding of how they work together to shape the world of commerce. Whether you are a budding entrepreneur, an aspiring finance professional, or simply someone intrigued by the dynamics of global markets, this course has something to offer everyone.

One of the key takeaways from this course is the recognition of the symbiotic relationship between finance, economics, and business strategy. Often seen as distinct disciplines, they are intricately linked in the real-world functioning of companies. As you progress through the course, you'll discover how macroeconomic shifts can exert a profound influence on businesses, ranging from multinational corporations to local startups. Simultaneously, you'll gain insights into the significance of minute details within financial documents, which can serve as early indicators of a company's financial health or vulnerability.

The course is divided into several different sections, each designed to build your knowledge progressively:

• Introduction: Begin your journey into the world of finance, economics, and business strategy.
• Key Terms and Basics of Money: Lay the foundation by understanding essential terminology and the fundamental principles of money.
• Excel Analysis of Compound Interest Case Study: Dive into practical financial scenarios and learn how to analyze compound interest.
• Financial Markets: Explore the intricacies of financial markets and how they function.
• Business Strategy: Uncover the secrets of crafting effective business strategies that drive success.
• Financial Statements: Decode financial statements and learn how to interpret them effectively.
• Capital Budgeting: Master the art of allocating financial resources efficiently.
• Macroeconomics: Grasp the impact of larger economic forces on businesses and industries.
• ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance): Discover the emerging importance of sustainability and ethical considerations in finance.
• Portfolio Diversification & Management: Learn the strategies behind portfolio management for long-term financial stability.
• Alternative Investment Types: Explore unconventional investment options that can enhance your financial portfolio.
• Summary of Course: Reflect on your journey and consolidate your newfound knowledge.

With these comprehensive modules, Sriram Chundi's course equips you with a well-rounded understanding of finance, economics, and business strategy, making it an important resource for anyone seeking to excel in the world of commerce.

You can watch the full course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel (2-hour watch).

Economics is the study of scarcity. It's how people interact with value.

Economics gives you tools to understand how people produce, distribute, and consume goods and services.

By applying economic theory, you can make well-reasoned business decisions. You can better understand competitive forces.

You can also understand concepts like the “diamond-water paradox,” which economist Adam Smith pondered but was ultimately unable to solve.

In this paradox, Smith struggled to explain why in this life – which cannot exist without water but can easily exist without diamonds – diamonds are far more valuable than water.

There are entire books written about the study of economics. There's no way I can outline the entire field of study in this one article. But here I will outline the core of this field of study.

Microeconomics vs Macroeconomics

At the highest level – and even this is perhaps a slight oversimplification – there are two branches to the study of economics:

1. Microeconomics: A firm or individual view of how companies and people make decisions.
2. Macroeconomics: How entire economies (countries) interact and trade, how nations' economies are structured, and the decision-making of economies writ large.

Within each of these branches there are multiple sub-segments:

Microeconomics:

• Understand consumer behavior
• How firms make decisions
• Examine market structures (monopoly, oligopoly, competition)
• Use supply and demand to analyze impact of changes in supply or demand on price and quantity
• How people and firms act to reduce costs and maximize profits
• Understand the behavior or individuals or firms when facing uncertainty.

Macroeconomics:

• Economics and global interactions
• Business cycles at a country level: unemployment, inflation, aggregate supply and aggregate demand
• How domestic output is measured
• Monetary markets
• Monetary policy
• Fiscal policy.

First Principles: Economic Concepts, Definitions, and Examples

When studying either microeconomics or macroeconomics, a few concepts remain the same, which for the sake of this article I will call First Principles.

At a high level here are the economic concepts that apply to economics (and the study of this field) and that you must be aware of.

1. The Law of Demand: The law of demand states that the quantity purchased varies inversely with price. In other words, the higher the price, the lower the quantity demanded.
2. The Law of Supply: The law of supply states that as the price of an item goes up, suppliers will attempt to maximize their profits by increasing the quantity offered for sale.
3. Scarcity: A good is scarce if it is impossible to consume more of the good without having to give something else up. Back to the diamond-water paradox: diamonds are scarce, and therefore expensive.
4. Opportunity Cost: When a decision is made about how to allocate a scarce good, an opportunity cost is incurred. The opportunity cost of an allocation is the next best allocation that is no longer possible (because the scarce good has been used up). The standard terminology is that the opportunity cost of a good is the “value of the next best foregone alternative.” When estimating the opportunity cost, you should consider all costs and benefits that vary as a consequence of a decision, and only those costs and benefits that vary with the decision. Typical examples of costs are overhead, depreciation, research and development.
5. The Cost-Benefit Principle: this principle simply says that an action should be taken if the additional benefits are greater than the additional costs.
6. Marginal Cost: Is the additional cost to produce one additional unit of a good. Typically, as output increases, marginal cost increases.
7. Producer Surplus for a Single Unit of Output: The difference between the price a firm receives from producing and selling a unit of output and the marginal cost of producing that particular unit.

Economics: Case-Study

I want to use a simple set of examples to demonstrate these core economic principles in practice.

Imagine you own a store that helps people buy engagement rings. You have a website and a physical retail space, equipment to make and fix jewelry, and a small team of dedicated employees.

The law of demand states that as the price of your rings goes up, people will buy fewer of them.

The law of supply states that as the price of rings goes up, you will try to increase the number you can sell.

Where this supply and demand meet, an equilibrium is obtained.

Scarcity states that as the material of the rings is harder to come by (for example gold, diamonds, and so on) the prices of these inputs will increase.

Opportunity cost states that when using gold to make a ring, you are not using this gold to make some other product - like earrings or a watch. You are making an explicit decision to use the raw material to make one final product: a ring. Because you can’t use that same gold to also make another item, this represents an opportunity cost.

The cost-benefit principle states that you should take an action if the added benefits are greater than the added costs. For example, let’s say that you want to sell one more ring but doing so requires you to keep your store open for another 30 minutes. What should you do? If the economic benefits of remaining open outweigh the costs of keeping the store open, that action should be taken.

Marginal cost is how much it costs to produce another unit of a good. Imagine that getting the property and equipment to make a ring is really expensive: you need space, a furnace, and trained technicians. These costs are all fixed: you need to buy these to start your operation.

But once you start making a single ring, how much does it take you to make a second? Or a third? This cost is your marginal cost.

In general, some businesses have high variable costs and others have very low variable costs.

Imagine an airline.

Every time an airline flies a plane they are paying for the use of the airplane, fuel, a flight crew, landing taxes, parking fees, and so on. Their variable costs are seemingly very large.

It is hard to start an airline because the fixed costs and the variable costs are high. Before flying your first flight you will need shell out a large sum of money.

Compare that with Google: it took a lot of money to set up data centers and hire really smart people to build Google Search. But each incremental search query costs Google very little (fractions of pennies). In short, Google’s core search business has low variable costs that are driven even lower by distribution and scale.

Software is a field that usually has a low to moderately low variable cost structure. That is because once the software is built and deployed, it can be run at scale relatively cheaply. Here are some additional examples you can think through:

1. QR Code Generator: takes a lot of work to build but can essentially run without heavy lifting once it’s live. When you have a product that doesn’t take too much specialized inputs to build - and has low costs to run, what do you think happens? The answer: you have lots of entrance into the space competing for users.

1. Shopify: an e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Again: many years of work to start and build but each additional merchant that uses the platform costs very little. Many merchants on Shopify run off network websites for monetization. Why? Because websites are the ultimate articulation of a low fixed cost, very low variable cost business. Each user (or piece of traffic) doesn’t cost the owner more money. The same cost structure applies to Business-2-Business marketplaces as well. This contracts decisively with the manufacturer of airplanes or rings or cars which have underlying costs each and every single time they are consumed.
2. Many software companies are trying to create their own software delivery platforms in-house, which can take a lot of time, and usually it is hard to forecast the many different fixed and variable costs that are associated with this development. Even further, once this software is built, it takes a lot of engineers to manage the platforms, perform QA/QC work, and continuously perform upgrades. Given this cost structure, what do many firms do? They turn to 3rd parties to perform this work because their internal people are a scarce resource.
3. A final example is software development: much like the tools you learn on freeCodeCamp, software development is all about the “start”. This represents the fixed costs to get going: a computer, an IDE, and access to programming languages. But once you build an app or website, your incremental costs remain low.

Conclusion

At its core, economics is the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. If you want to understand why people, firms, and countries behave the way they do – and how they interact with and manage scarce resources – economics is an incredibly useful guide.

By understanding supply, demand, scarcity, opportunity costs, the cost-benefit principle, marginal cost, and produce surplus you are well on your way to scratching the surface of this important field.

These statements are referencing something called the Pareto Principle, or the 80-20 rule. The principle basically states that a small percentage of causes are responsible for a large percentage of results.

Let's dive in and look at the Pareto Principle and its related concepts in a bit more detail.

What is the Pareto Principle?

In the 1940s, an engineer and management consultant named Joseph Juran came across the work of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto had noticed that around 80% of the land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the population.

Juran observed that this pattern applied to many areas of economics, business, math, and other sciences. He applied the principle to issues of quality control, noting that 80% of problems in business and manufacturing could be attributed to just 20% of the causes.

Juran was the one who named the Pareto Principle and described its parts as "the vital few and the trivial many." This implies that fewer causes/people are important and impactful while many outcomes are affected by those few causes.

Fun fact before we move on: the legend is that Vilfredo Pareto first noticed this distribution in his garden. He saw that around 20% of his pea plants produced about 80% of the fruit. That's what supposedly gave him the idea to apply the principle more widely to economics and wealth distribution.

So how does the Pareto Principle relate to Programming?

Bug squashing

This is all very well and good, you might be thinking – but why should you care if you're a developer?

Well, the 80/20 rule also applies to various areas of programming as well. Think of it this way: 80% of bugs can be solved by fixing just 20% of the problems that cause bugs.

So instead of tackling each bug as it comes, you should work to identify the bugs that are causing the most issues. When you've found those bugs, crush them, and most (around 80%) of your problems will be solved.

Productivity

On a team, some members are likely to be more productive than others. Some power through their code, focus like champs, and get done in several hours what it might take another developer all day (or longer) to complete.

Because of this, it's usually the case that 20% of team does about 80% of the work.

Writing code

When you're developing a project, it typically takes about 20% of the time you've allocated for that project to complete about 80% of the work.

But of course, conversely, the remaining 20% of the project takes up the other 80% of the time you've allotted.

In other words, building out the straightforward and general parts of an app doesn't take that much time. But implementing complex functionality, fixing bugs, and solving problems – a much smaller chunk of the overall project – easily eats up way more time.

How Can the Pareto Principle Help You Be More Productive?

Alright, hopefully you understand how the 80/20 rule works. So how can you use it in your every day life? Is it applicable to people like you and me, or is it just useful to economists and mathematicians?

You can definitely apply this principle to your life to help you become more productive and focus on what's important.

If you're a manager, for example, identify the tasks and responsibilities that are most important and that will produce the most results if you handle them personally. Anything else should be delegated or eliminated from your schedule.

If you're a writer and you want to help as many people as possible, do a little research and see which of your 10 proposed topics will be the most searched for and most relevant to people. Write about those top few subjects and do a really great job on them.

If you're a freelancer and some of your clients give you more work than others, make sure you nurture those relationships and take care of those clients (as, you guessed it, they'll probably be responsible for around 80% of your income).

So hopefully now you see how focusing on the most important, most relevant, most impactful ~20% of the stuff you're responsible for can generate the greatest outcome.

And while this distribution may not always be exactly 80%/20%, you get the idea. A small amount of causes are often responsible for a large percentage of the outcomes.

What's the Difference Between the Pareto Principle, Pareto Distribution, and Pareto Efficiency?

The Pareto Principle, as we've discussed in this article, refers to the observation that a small number of causes are responsible for a large number of outcomes.

The Pareto distribution refers to the mathematical distribution itself - that, for example, 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people. This distribution is observed in many different fields such as economics, math, business, and so on.

The Pareto distribution is a power law distribution in statistics, which means that, in a functional relationship between two quantities, when one quantity is affected or changes, the other changes proportionately and relative to that initial change.

For example, if you double the length of the side of a square, the area of that square will increase four times.

And finally, Pareto efficiency refers to a situation where all parties concerned are in the best possible state, and none of them could become better off without detracting from the others.

For example, if three people are sharing a cake, they reach a state of Pareto efficiency if the cake is divided into three equal parts and distributed among them. None of them could have a larger piece of cake, because this would mean that one of the others would have to have a smaller one.

If, however, you had a cake divided into four pieces, and you only had three people, you could, in fact, give each person a little more cake by dividing the final piece in thirds. This situation is called a Pareto improvement, because there's room to improve the state for all parties concerned without detracting from any one of them.

And that's about it! Hopefully now you understand what the Pareto Principle, or 80-20 rule, is all about. And maybe now you can use it to prioritize tasks in your day-to-day life.

The gender pay gap is real

Not only are women grossly under-represented among developers, but they are grossly under-paid.

Women earned on average $13,000 less than their male counterparts.

Even when you control for location, title, and years of experience, women still get $5,000 less per year than men.

Employers actually do value age and experience

One of the most common misconceptions about programming is that it’s a “young person’s game.”

But the astronomic salaries of recent college graduates at companies like Facebook are not representative of the field as a whole.

There’s a predictable correlation: the more experience you have — and generally, the older you are — the more you get paid. $1,194 more each year, to be exact.

Developers who shun meetings pay a price

Like it or not, developers who spend more time in meetings — and less time coding — tend to make more money.

The bigger the company, the bigger your salary

Part of this may be explained by smaller companies (startups?) granting equity in lieu of large salaries.

Interestingly, when you control for experience and location, freelancers make about $12,000 more per year than their full-time employee equivalents (though it’s not clear how much of this goes toward paying their own insurance.)

Most software jobs are actually outside of the tech industry

Pretty much every large organization employs developers. Only about 1/3 of developers work in what we traditionally think of as the “tech” industry.

But some industries pay better than others

The median annual developer salary was $90k.

But the same job in finance pays $11k more per year.

Education pays the worst — $11k less than median.

The more you work, the more you get paid

Working smart is no substitute for working hard, at least as far as compensation is concerned.

About half of developers reported working 40 hours or more a week. And since the developers who spend the most time at their desk generally take home the most money, it’s hard to blame them.

What about people who are new to development?

We surveyed more than 15,000 people who are new to software development. And we’ve released the results as open data.

And here’s the full O’Reilly survey analysis (note: it’s email-walled).

I only write about programming and technology. If you follow me on Twitter I won’t waste your time. ?

A Short Guide to Applying, Interviewing, and Deciding

I’ve been learning how to code for nearly 10 months, and until very recently, this has been a mostly self-driven endeavor. I started off with the same free resources that most newbies use. I supplemented my learning with paid content at egghead.io, Code School, and a few courses hosted on Udemy.

Going down the self-taught path is a great option for most people, especially those who are already employed and don’t have a lot of pressure to switch careers and find a development job.

I don’t have the luxury of time anymore, and I have decided to enroll in the Viking Code School to help me get job-ready in a very short amount of time.

I applied to 5 coding bootcamps last month, and I would like to share my opinions about each program and how I ultimately decided to go with the Viking Code School.

Hack Reactor Remote Beta & MakerSquare Austin, TX

Considered the “Harvard of coding bootcamps”, Hack Reactor and its sister school MakerSquare are top-notch. If you can afford the high price tag of $17,780 USD, then you will have a very rewarding and challenging educational experience. Here’s the break down:

1. Application — The application process is super easy and only takes about 2 minutes. After filling out some basic information about yourself, you schedule a technical interview and that’s it! You only need a single application even if you want to apply to several of Hack Reactor affiliate schools.
2. Interview — You will chat with a recent graduate of the program who will ask you to complete several challenges. I won’t go into detail here, but you should definitely be comfortable using JavaScript and very familiar with iterating through objects and arrays and using callback functions. The interview for Hack Reactor and MakerSquare were identical, so I recommend applying to several schools and having multiple interviews.
3. My Decision—The tuition was a very big turn off for me. And even though I have awesome credit, I didn’t want to take out another loan and add to my already staggering student load debt balance. I wish I could afford the tuition and living expenses, but if it’s not a problem for you, then go for it! The program is all about JavaScript, which is the hottest language right now.

Coding House in Fremont, California

This is a live-in coding bootcamp, meaning you learn, eat, and sleep in the same place for three months. Like MakerSquare and Hack Reactor, Coding House focuses on JavaScript and the MEAN stack. The tuition is deferred, and you don’t pay until you have found a job.

Well, it’s not exactly “don’t pay” up front. You still need to pay a $2,000 deposit in addition to $4,000 for room and board. So that’s six big-ones up front. But hey, you don’t have to worry about rent, cooking, or cleaning. Awesome!

And what exactly is tuition deferred? It DOESN’T mean you pay no tuition. If you find a full time job within 6 months of completing the program, then you pay a placement fee equal to 18% of your first year’s salary. The $2,000 deposit goes towards this placement fee, but you have to pay the placement fee over the first 6 months of employment. Assuming you find a job with a salary of $90,000, you will only take home about $3,300 a month after taxes and paying Coding House’s placement fee. This very small paycheck would only last for 6 months, but damn, that’s what I make as an English teacher! And one final note: You must be authorized to work in the United States to qualify for tuition deferment. If not, you have to pay the full price of $14,000. Sorry Canadian friends :-(

1. The Application — The application was relatively easy. In addition to completing basic information about yourself, you have to complete 10 of their prep work exercises before you can move on to the first interview.
2. The Interview — There are actually two interviews. The first one will be with Nick, the founder of Coding House, and this is just an informal conversation to see if you would make a good fit in the program. (Probably to make sure you’re not too weird. Nobody wants to share a bunk bed with a creep!). The second interview is a “technical” interview, but there were no coding or algorithm challenges. You simply chat with one of the instructors and answer a few simple questions about JavaScript and programming in general.
3. My Decision — The room/board and tuition deferment were big selling points for me, but I got the impression from the prep work and interviews that this program is geared towards beginners with little experience in programing or web development. I’m not saying that I couldn’t learn anything new with Coding House, but I don’t think I would hit the ground running with these guys and get challenged enough by their curriculum. If you are a true beginner, then Coding House might be the program for you.

App Academy in San Francisco

This is another very reputable bootcamp located in San Francisco. Of all the schools you can apply to, App Academy is the most competitive. The acceptance rate hovers around 5%, which means you have better odds getting into an Ivy League school!

This program also offers deferred tuition (see my note above about what that means), but only if you are authorized to work in the United States. App Academy focuses on using Ruby on Rails for the back end, but you still get a healthy dose of JavaScript for the front end.

1. The Application — Unlike the others, your application will take about an hour to complete. In addition to answering the usual biographic questions, you will also have to solve three or four algorithmic challenges within an hour. The challenges were quite easy, and I was able to complete them in about 20 minutes.
2. The Interview — This was the most difficult interview I had, and it was very clear why they have such a low acceptance rate. You will do three algorithmic challenges in the interview, and you have exactly 15 minutes to do each one. And they are really difficult challenges too! I was able to complete the first two without any problems, but the last one really did my head in. Make sure you get a lot of practice at Code Wars and Hacker Rank before attempting this interview.
3. My Decision — I was only offered conditional acceptance into the program, and my application would have been reconsidered if I participated in $2,000 prep course (which would cover my deposit if I were accepted into the program later on). But even if I had been accepted into the program, I would have to pay for living expenses for the most expensive city in America and probably wipe out my savings in the process.

Viking Code School

And finally the school of my dreams!

VCS is the first online coding bootcamp, and its founder, Erik Trautman, is a graduate of the App Academy. This program also focuses on Ruby on Rails and goes deep into the CS fundamentals and the job seeking process. This is another “don’t pay until you get a job” program, but there is also the option to join the Flex program, which has weekly start dates and a monthly pricing system.

It takes most participants 6 to 10 months to complete the Flex program on a part-time basis, and once you have completed the program, you are not obligated to pay the job placement fee.

1. The Application — It is very similar to App Academy’s application. Answer a few simple questions about yourself and complete a few coding challenges against the clock.
2. The Interview — Also very challenging coding exercises during the interview. I would say Viking Code School’s interview is as tough as App Academy’s, so you definitely want to brush up on the fundamentals and get really fast at solving problems. Erik really emphasizes the importance of communicating clearly during the interview, so get in the habit of talking out loud while coding.
3. My Decision — After five bootcamp applications and interviews, I ultimately went the Viking Code School Flex Program. First, they have an insanely positive web presence and reputation, and I could not find any dirt or horror stories about Erik or Viking Code School. The previous participants have found jobs as full time web developers, and it’s hard to argue with success. Second, I like the rolling start dates of the Flex program and how I can complete the course on a part-time basis. I have five months remaining in Korea, and I will be nearly done with the course by the time I go back home. And finally, the tuition for the Flex program is affordable, and I won’t have to take out any loans. There are currently three tiers of support, each with different prices, and it is possible to switch back and forth from tier to tier. For example, the beginning of the program focuses on HTML, Bootstrap, and the basics of the Ruby programming language. Because I feel comfortable with all those technologies now, I decided to go with the lowest tier of support (and save money), but I will switch to a higher tier when I get into the more difficult challenges and projects.

Your Questions

Do you have any questions about these schools or coding bootcamps in general? Please write them below, and I will respond to each one individually. I hope this guide was successful and I wish the best of luck in your coding endeavors!

The history of the human race is basically a history of technology.

Some would object that history of human race is pretty much a history of warfare. However, since all warfare is fought and won by utilizing technology, I’ll hold fast to my opening statement.

Technological progress is a double-edged sword. Our advancement has long held the power to liberate us, but it has recently been used to dominate us.

When a Player Becomes the Played

It all starts innocuously and innocently: we find a way to avail ourselves of some exciting, mesmerizing technological innovation. We feel it solves so many of our problems. But then, slowly and imperceptibly, we come to the rude awakening and a startling realization that we’ve turned into a servant of that cherished technological product.

Be it an automobile, or a TV set, or a computer, or a smart phone etc., we always tend to fall into the trap of wasting many of our waking hours serving those products, slaving and mindlessly obeying their demands.

We always start as masters, basking in the glory of our latest acquisition, but then invariably fall into the trap of worrying and slaving and becoming addicted.

One of the most recent tricks on the population at large was the ushering of the age of self-serve.

It all started innocently enough: back in the day when technology was still quite primitive, we needed intermediary agents/brokers to assist us with the usage.

An example would be a post office specialists who were trained to translate our text into Morse code and then send it across the wire to another location (even to this day we still retain the term ‘to wire something’ when we’re sending any content electronically).

Another example would be telephone operators. Early phones were implemented by utilizing technology that was much more primitive compared to what we have today. It’s a small wonder then that we needed human workforce to enable us to make a successful phone call.

Other similar examples abound — but you get the picture.

With the unstoppable advancements in technology, many of those early and quite crude capabilities gradually became more sophisticated. This progress had eliminated the need for having human workforce as intermediate enablers. Elevators became easier to operate, and then the profession of so-called elevator operators became extinct. Likewise, today’s telephone switch centers are fully automated, and no one can hope to make money by selling their manual switchboard skills.

And of course, same thing happened with telegrams. We have obtained more sophisticated devices which enable us to send textual messages without having to master the Morse code.

All these advancements have demonstrated how we have ushered into a new age that can be labeled self-serve. There is no more need for us to rely on being served when riding an elevator, or making a phone call, or sending out a message.

So it’s a good thing, right?

No, not really. It’s more of a trick, because now we’ve been conditioned into learning how to do everything ourselves. So, instead of purchasing an airplane ticket and then just arriving at the airport and getting everything taken care of by the airport staff, we are expected to rely on our self-serve skills.

Instead of visiting a travel agent who will guide us through the travel package purchasing exercise, we are left to our own devices. We now need to rely on our own wits. We’re expected to do the magical ‘self serve’ and perform all the legwork.

So how is that advantageous? If we’re paying good money for something, shouldn’t the price include professional service as well? You see, we’ve been duped by the sneaky sales people who have leveraged technological progress to turn us into servants. Not only did we end up being servants, we are now servants who do the work for free. No, hold it, we’re not only doing the work for free — we’re paying out of our own pocket for the privilege to do someone else’s work!

Amazing, isn’t it? That’s why I say that we’re now living in an age of the self-serve trap.

Luckily there is a way out.

The game changer in technology goes by a very simple name — bot. A bot is a piece of technology that flips the tables on the dreaded self-serve paradigm. Bots propose to bring back the idea that humans should be served, not left to their own meagre devices in trying to serve themselves.

You see, the very raison d’etre of any bot is that it is put into place to serve humans. Maybe it would help if we look into a very simple, trivial example underlying the difference between self-serve and being served.

Every night just before I go to bed I set the wake up alarm on my iPhone. The time when I wish to wake up varies from day to day, depending on my schedule. So every night I open my iPhone, tap on the Clock app, tap on the Alarm icon, and then start fumbling around trying to set the exact time when I want to be woken up. So that activity would be your fabulous self-serve.

Enter Siri (an iPhone bot who is designed to serve me, the iPhone master). All I have to do is say: “Siri, wake me up tomorrow at 6:30.” Siri will confirm by repeating back “I will wake you up tomorrow morning at 6:30.”

See, that’s how I like things to work — I like being served. I definitely don’t like serving myself. It sucks. Same as it sucks when I go to the supermarket and roll my shopping cart to the checkout register only to learn that I now have to do the idiotic self-serve, instead of enjoying the professional service of well trained staff.

And they tried to swindle us by labeling that as ‘progress’? Good riddance!

And a warm welcome to bots!

Intrigued? Want to learn more about the bot revolution? Read more detailed explanations here:

Only No Ux Is Good UX
Stop Building Lame Bots!
Four Types Of Bots
Is There A Downside To Conversational Interfaces?
Are Bots just a Fad? Are GUIs really Superior?
How to Design a Bot Protocol
Breaking The Fourth Wall In Software
Bots Are The Anti-Apps
How Much NLP Do Bots Need?
Screens Are For Consumption, Not For Interaction