The TopCoder case is intended to provide you with an overview of how a platform-based firm uses contests to create software. It provides an introduction to the application of crowdsourcing for the relatively complex and important task of software development.
From the readings in Gee ("Getting Smarter Before Its Too Late"), the slides presented on the topic, and the Wired article ("How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other" on information sharing apps, there are also many other collective action/information sharing applications that are used to solve potentially complex problems.
Because we are commenting and posting ideas on a blog, the goal is to be interactive (see Gee above). The questions posted are mostly to provide a way to respond to the case and other readings. Finally, please read what others wrote. Do your best not to post a "new" comment or post, if it has already been mentioned previously. Rather, add to the post/comment. Please consider the questions posted below, and address the ones you want to answer according to the cases, but also add your opinions and/or experiences. You do not need to answer all of the questions; perhaps explore one or two in depth. Comments count.
I realize that this may not be typical of the way you write-up cases, but that's ok. Maybe we'll learn more from each other this way.
Instructions: Answer one question or comment from TopCoder (Qs 1-3) and one post or comment about collective action/"sharing economy" (Q4). As an option, you can post Q.4 for Tech Musing #2 about a "new" type of collective action not mentioned in the readings.
- If you were a senior manager at TopCoder, what are the main capabilities you would need to develop to succeed at running the firm? Are these capabilities similar or unique from managing a more traditional firm?
- As a client of TopCoder what would your main areas of concern be with this type of outsourcing? Has TopCoder done enough to overcome them?
- The CEO believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply. What are the reasons for doubting or agreeing with this core assumption of the business model?
- Find an example of collective action or an information sharing app. Describe and link to the digital tool. Explain what it does, how it works, and the types of problems it is working to solve. Do not use examples from those discussed specifically in the article (e.g., Airbnb, Lyft, Uber), but there are NEW examples of these and others that you can discuss.
2. As a client, I would an issue with the idea of intellectual property and security. Other clients of the company have been fearful that a programmer for TopCoder might reveal confidential information to their competitors. I'd also be concerned with the possibility that a programmer would withhold a component of the code, in hopes of exchanging the missing piece for royalties. A solution could even be stolen by a member of the community, which could lead to intellectual property issues. TopCoder has tried to mitigate such risks by producing a white paper complete with confidentiality policies and other rules. Clients can also opt to keep their company name anonymous or require its programmers to sign a confidentiality agreement. Peer review processes are also being conducted to assist with security.
ReplyDeleteThe last two concerns I would have involve the cultural environment and coding challenges. From a cultural perspective, programmers at TopCoder might not be receptive to the culture that my company has. They could respond by acting rudely in times of serious discourse. In addition to this risk, current employees of mine might feel threatened by the TopCoder workers. In respect to coding challenges, even once TopCoder completes the programming, additional time and resources stemming from my company's internal staff would have to review the code and adjust it accordingly. In terms of solving problems, TopCoder programmers might not be able to sufficiently solve the problems if insufficient detail is provided. Too broad or too complex problems could cause troubles for programmers.
Overall, I believe TopCoder has done a good job at overcoming the concerns that I have about their business model. This includes its method of dealing with security concerns by allowing companies to stay anonymous or to require confidentiality agreements. However, I also recognize that some concerns that I have are more difficult to deal with, such as the culture shift involved. Coding challenges can be managed by the client themselves, making sure to properly document its problems in a manner that can be comprehended.
4. https://www.waze.com/ Waze is a community-based traffic and navigation app, the largest of its kind in the world. When you drive with Waze open, you are providing real-time traffic information to your community. With the app, it is easy to report accidents or other hazards on the road. Waze provides you with road alerts, gas price updates, and navigation, while also allowing you to communicate with your friends, which are synced through Facebook. Its goal is to benefit and improve communities and improve the commuting experience through the contribution of information.
2.) I think that Bryan brings up a few great points about the problems with intellectual property of code. Essentially, top coder is paying for the intellectual property of crowd-sourced coders. Because software can be so easily reproduced, it is likely that the developer could share the code he/she wrote with any other person or entity that would be interested in purchasing it. I think that this problem (which Bryan brought up) is the biggest. It would defeat the entire advantage that the company is gaining over its competitors.
DeleteI’ve thought of a couple more problems related to intellectual property.
1. Good coders might not want to give away their coding expertise to Top Coder contests, so only bad coders would be left to give away.
2. Coders might take short cuts in the coding process (leave out important comments, create inefficient code, etc.) in order to win contests under a time constraint.
3. Monetary Incentives might not be enough to get good quality coders to enter the contests.
I feel that Top Coder is a great service that offers mediocre coders the chance to learn and prove their talent, but I think that getting high level coding talent is a problem that Top Coder needs to address.
4.) http://www.zazzle.com/ somewhat of a crowdsourcing website. They offer different forms of apparel that the customer can customize with their own designs such as phone cases, t-shirts, hats etc. Zazzle offers crowdsourcing by letting their customers share their designs on the website to get royalties if their design is purchased by other users.
http://www.zazzle.com is one site, but there is also Threadless.com, which has been around for a while and is quite successful and unique. It works on a competition basis, too, so if your design is picked, you can sell it on the website. There is a case on this as well, with a video. Hmmm. I'll see if I can find that video.
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ReplyDeleteSeems like Taylor's comment was removed by him. I would like to agree with him, too, if I knew what he said. :)
DeleteI partially agree with what Taylor said in previous comment. The “two-sided platform” model does attracts lots of clients and programmers. However, I do not think the project demand will automatically created programmer supply. I have to say that the project demand is just one of the factors that affect the programmer supply. In my opinions, money, TopCoder rating, potential opportunities, working flexibility and TopCoder culture all play important roles in creating programmer supply.
ReplyDeleteThere is no double that money prize and Digital Run system TopCoder had are two essential elements that attract lots of programmer join in the community in the first place and keep the top programmers stay in the community. Programmers will not spend so many energies and time on coding online just for fun. They have to make a living first. After making sure that they can feed themselves and their families, those programmer then start to pursue a high-quality life. All the other elements will plays a part now.
Just like Keith Moore, a TopCoder client described in the case, clients have trouble to “find the right types of problems and provide the appropriate amount of problem details for the TopCoder community.” Programmers are smart. They will choose the competitions that they have a better chance to win without wasting too much time and energies. Therefore, not all projects will be favored by programmers. A increasing project demand does not match with a increasing programmer supply.
4. https://www.quora.com/ When I saw this, the first information sharing app cross my mind is Quora. I believe almost everyone have used or at least heard about Quora. Just like the slogan of Quora said, “the best answer to any question”, Quora is a question—and- answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its comment of users. You can ask any questions you want in this community, people will post their answers and anyone can vote the answer he/she think is the best. Quora requires users to register with their “real names”. it even includes some well-known people.
I agree with Sijie Shao on the statement project demand doesn’t necessary brings programmer supply. Even though it seems valid to me at the first glance, it actually have some room for doubt if you take a look at it on the other standpoint.
DeleteOn the economic perspective, more demand for the project would means they come with more rewards for those who could provide. Therefore, people will start dedicate more of their time on fulfilling the demand, when the rewards reaches a certain level.
But on the other aspect, in terms of reward distribution, according to the case “The top 5% of prize earners received approximately 80% of the total prize pool, while the majority of TopCoder community members earned little or no money from competitions.” Which indicates that not all of the financial rewards are distributed evenly among the community. Due to the nature of the TopCoder competition, only the best programmer can earn the practical benefits, and the rest of the them will only get a rating based on their performance during the competition. Even though a good rating might eventually helping a programmer to acquire a better position out in the market, it might just not enough to financially support the fresh blood to devote one’s time as a career.
Therefore, I believe that TopCoder needs to have a more versatile supporting measure regarding the issue of reward distribution, preventing the new programmer to get cold feet about not getting any practical rewards after joining the community. So the theory of “more project demand equals more programmer supply” can actually be valid under this circumstances.
Q4
https://www.craigslist.org/
Craigslist is a website that provides a place where people can advertise and share information almost about everything, it also helps the users to easily find the right content in their local areas. Craigslist classify all kinds of category on their front page, it ranges from job position to pet services, house sales to local events. Craigslist solves the problem of connecting with other people within their community, since it opens to everyone on the internet and is free to view, so people doesn’t have to depending on their network anymore when it comes to finding a job or selling home items.
3. While the CEO of TopCoder believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply, I am doubtful of this core assumption to the business model. There are a few reasons that this assumption might not be entirely accurate and might hurt the business. Creating programmer supply requires financial incentives, and simply increasing the number of projects might put strain on TopCoder’s resources.
ReplyDeleteSijie already mentioned that a monetary incentive is one of the key ways for creating programmer supply. To add to this, the top 5% of prize earners received approximately 80% of the total prize pool, while the majority of TopCoder community members earned little or no money from competitions. If coders of lower skill level already know they have slimmer chances of winning prizes, they might seek full-time jobs or training instead of jumping into TopCoder’s community. Moreover, even if more projects drew in more programmers, the law of diminishing returns dictates that each new programmer will yield lower incremental returns, possibly resulting in lower productivity, lower quality code, or an increased number of bugs.
Another concern I have with this assumption is in terms of resource allocation. With an increased number of projects, TopCoder would need to increase its number of platform managers and give out more prize money. Furthermore, the resources of the community itself needs to be considered. There might be too few peer reviewers to handle the increase in projects since each peer reviewer needs to be selected and vetted by TopCoder employees. The case mentioned that as more contests became available, the usual reviewers wanted to compete in the contests, rather than review them. The case also indicated that simply having more contests did not increase participation and TopCoder employees actually had to reach out directly to individual community members to ask for participation.
Overall, I am doubtful of the assumption that project demand will automatically create programmer supply. Acting on this assumption and allowing more firms to host contests with TopCoder could prove costly. If the assumption is wrong, TopCoder might have to spend more than it is worth to maintain client relations and projects. If the assumption is right, end products might suffer in quality resulting in upset clients and a tarnished reputation for TopCoder.
4. http://99designs.com/
One example of collective action that the TopCoder case reminded me of is 99designs. Like TopCoder, it leverages the idea of contests to crowdsource products for clients. Instead of software development, 99designs users submit designs for logos, brands, packaging, websites, t-shirts and more. Clients launch contests, receive designs, and select a winner. Essentially it is an online marketplace for graphic design products. It works to solve a similar problem that TopCoder does. Instead of having an in-house design team, companies can crowdsource its graphic design and find designers they may want to work with in the future.
Kory, great post!
DeleteI don’t necessarily disagree with your argument posed in question three, however I have a different point of view.
I think it’s plausible that, given the right circumstances, project demand can create programmer supply. A big factor that determines the validity of that statement is critical mass. Once TopCoder hit a critical mass of users, it demonstrated that project demand can drive programmer supply. In the Attraction subsection of the case (on page 11), it was noted that the company hit what it believed to be a critical mass of programmers – 200,000 people. The case then went on to state that, “there were now many members with deep and narrow skills over a range of software development challenges”. Granted, there were initial marketing efforts to attract these people, but now that there are enough, the supply becomes less of an issue. An extreme example of this is Facebook. Nobody is marketing Facebook and telling you to use it, you just use it. You interact with other users, post new content and do other things that contribute to their business model (interact with ads, agree to have your data shared with others, etc.). The reason behind this is because Facebook has demonstrated (and then some) that it can maintain a critical mass of users.
One area I do agree with you, as you mentioned in your post, is the CEO’s wording and specifically, the use of “automatically”. I am sure that all of us business students know that we should never expect anything to be automatic, especially when the success of your venture is on the line.
Later in your post you mentioned that new coders will have a slimmer chance of winning prizes and that the law of diminishing returns will take over. I’m not sure I agree with that statement because there aren’t any factors keeping other, well-qualified programmers from joining the site. Perhaps the top 5% did earn most of the prizes, but who is to say that this website has successfully attracted every talented programmer in the world? I would venture to say that a small portion of the total available market of programmers worldwide even know about this website and an even fewer have ever competed in a competition. In my mind, more programmers equals better returns, more productivity, higher quality code and a decreased number of software bugs.
Finally, I would like to contribute an answer of my own for question number 4. The website is called upwork.com. I know UpWork well, as I am currently using it now on a startup of my own. Basically, it is a website where people post technical coding related jobs and programmers from all over the world apply to be your developer. It is similar to TopCoder in the sense that it uses coders to complete jobs, except that the barriers of entry are much lower for both the companies and the applicants. One feature I like about UpWork is that it offers tests that the applicants may take and then are displayed for the hiring company to see and make a judgment on the skill of the applicant. These tests range far and wide from specific technical skills to even language proficiency tests. Another useful feature is that the portfolio and job success rate is publically viewable to anybody, so there is a greater sense of transparency. The site is especially useful because it asks as the mediator between the two parties in the case that there is a dispute. I think a problem it faces is that it faces a lot of competition. There are other similar sites that do similar functions such as Guru, fiverr or even established mobile/web development firms.
http://99designs.com/ is similar to TopCoder. There have been other attempts in the design arena, not all of which are sustaining. Etsy is one example of success, and maybe part of the reason is that they implemented DevOps and deploy often, so technologically they are keeping up with the supply/demand challenge inherent in all of these.
DeleteLike https://upwork.com. Seems like a great way to find a team to help you with a start-up, but you are right, James, there are SOOO many similar sites out there. Seems you are committed to finding the right site for you. #duediligence
2. I agree with Bryan Balcerzak that, as a client, I would be concerned with the security of my company’s intellectual property. Further, I see this issue including both TopCoder programmers as well as TopCoder as a company. From the programmers side, there is a potential risk of programmers retaining pieces of the code to bargain or reusing code that they created for other companies to make additional money. On TopCoder’s side, they revealed that, in order to be more efficient, they have reused previously built code to provide solutions for many other clients; this could be a potential problem for companies seeking a competitive advantage through unique code and algorithms. As Bryan mentioned on his blog comment, TopCoder has published a white paper to provide clients with policies and solutions to IP concerns. However, I would still argue that the risks involved in opening up intellectual property to a public community will always be a big concern due to the nature of the internet.
ReplyDeleteEven after implementing policies and procedures that aim to prevent stealing ideas and intellectual property, it could be very difficult to track and detect which programmer has shared what information with whom. As much as TopCoder has grown, with over 250,000 programmers, TopCoder could not possibly manage all the communication and collaboration that happens between programmers as Taylor James Lorenson stated. Therefore, there a potential risk of loop holes where information could be leaked out to external programmers who are interested in purchasing cheap code from the programmers who participated in the competition and did not win a prize.
In the end, TopCoder has had tremendous success and grown to have over 250,000 members. The fact that a competitive community has grown to be this big has to have some sort of dependance on the benefits programmers get and the trust that clients have. Even after all the risks that publicly published IP might bring upon clients, companies are finding the benefits to outweigh the risks. Therefore, all these concerns should be taken into consideration so that companies include them into their budget, forecasts, and plans for success.
4. http://knockknock.co/ Knock knock is a contact-sharing and chat app that enables people to choose what type of contact information they would like to share with each particular person that they meet. For example, if a group of people is networking, users are able to select who they want to share their email address with and who they would like to share their twitter handle with. By literally knocking on their phone, users can see who in the area is available to connect and exchange contact information. The goal of this app is to solve the problem of hesitating to give a personal email, professional email, phone number, Facebook, or other accounts to someone you just met and vice versa.
3. TopCoder's CEO believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply. This is a core assumption for TopCoder's business model, but I would label it as a dangerous assumption. I don't believe programmer supply is an issue for TopCoder, but the word "automatically" gives me pause.
ReplyDeleteProject demand does not directly increase the supply of programmers for TopCoder. Instead, they have a very talented team of Platform Managers that derive prize money for each contest based on a variety of factors such as complexity of the project and estimated completion time for the project. Just as the Platform Managers carefully decide how much prize money should be available for each project, TopCoder community members carefully decide which projects they participate in. If certain projects aren't getting enough "nibbles" from community members, TopCoder's Platform Managers could potentially increase the prize money for a project.
Kory mentioned an interesting stat that I was also going to include: 80% of all TopCoder prize money is won by the top 5% of coders. Kory said that a stat like that may dissuade less experienced coders from competing at all, but I am not so sure. TopCoder community members vary quite a lot. Some members (the big fish) treat TopCoder like a full-time job, putting in 40-50 hours per week. Others participate in TopCoder contests to boost their TopCoder Reputation, which has helped some community members land jobs at great companies like Google, so I think participating in TopCoder can be about more than just prize money.
I wouldn't necessarily say that project demand "automatically" creates programmer supply, but I think TopCoder's experienced Platform Managers combined with some of the non-prize money related benefits TopCoder offers will maintain a steady supply of programmers. As of February 27th 2016, TopCoder has over 960,000 members (https://www.topcoder.com/community/members/). Although not all of them are competing in contests, it seems safe to say that the supply of TopCoder programmers is definitely on the rise.
4. https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm
Glassdoor is an information sharing app where people post about various experiences with jobs. People post reviews about what it was like to work for a certain company, interview questions they had during the hiring process, and even salary information. People have the option to post with their name, or anonymously. Anyone can use the app for free; all you have to do is sign up, then post at least one review for a job you have had, then you access to ALL information on the app. I like how they require you to contribute to the community in order to gain access. Glassdoor helps job seekers make more informed decisions about jobs. It has been an invaluable resource for me during my job search and I highly encourage my fellow classmates to use this resource during your job search endeavors!
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ReplyDeleteAlthough TopCoder is very large whose community reached over 200,000 members by 2009, as a client looking to solve business problems for their company – especially a small one – by outsourcing to TopCoder could pose significant overload. While big companies with multiple functional areas of potential improvement could benefit from a multitude of ideas and the innovative inputs of a large crowdsource community as a small company cannot take advantage of this because it runs the risk of overloading. For small companies outsourcing is too expensive and even if they the small business client decides to outsource they must prioritize in which implementations – recommended by TopCoders – small businesses are able to integrate. The most appropriate way to provide riskless TopCoder services to small business is to have a lower selective price for them and to develop a more intimate partnership to encourage.
There seems to be a slight difference about TopCoders’ speed in back-end bug races and system checks. Some clients said that TopCoder worked at about the same speed as a large IT consulting firm, while other lauded TopCoder for speed of completion. This might mean that TopCoder is having troubling finding the most appropriates way in integrating their technical implementations. Clients have even said that they have had initial reservations about working with TopCoder’s unusual software development model. This indicates the TopCoder outsourcing runs the risk of disruption and clients should be more aware of this.
http://www.yelp.com/ Yelp is a mobile app, which publish crowd-soured reviews about local business as well as online reservation service, food-delivery. Uses automated software to recommend the most helpful and reliable reviews for the Yelp community. The software looks at dozens of different signals, including various measures of quality, reliability and activity. It is a social-networking site that lets users post reviews and rate business.
Problems with Yelp:
1) Fake negative reviews, competitors become disgruntled
2) Only 1 review and its negative, hurts business because of just one review
3) No proof that review is fake so Yelp won’t take it down
4) Some clients opened Yelp accounts to post a review, but their reviews of my practice are filtered, or “not recommended.”
2. While client outsourced their program to TopCoder community to seek better ideas, quality, lower costs, and more flexibility on the project development duration. Like Bryan Balcerzak and Ivan Mendez stated in their comments, the most concern from client perspective would be the risk of revealing company’s confidential business plan, internal codes, or even employees’ information. In addition to Ivan’s comments, I see those risks may not only from the person side, but also from the business model of TopCoder itself. There is a peer-review procedure to ensure the code security and quality, accordingly, not only programmers who participated the competition will know the source code but also people who attended the review process will know. Besides, one of the main benefits of TopCoder is more time consuming by allowing programmers reuse the basic components from existing programs. The potential risks for clients would be incompatible between the reuse part and company’s internal system, and there is no guarantee that those reuse parts will not be involved in programs for other clients.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that TopCoder tried to minimize clients risky level, still there are many external factors that may hamper the community’s plan. Like Bryan mentioned, cultural change would be another threat to clients, especially for programmers from clients’ side. I think TopCoder will encounter with more external factors in the future as they are growing very fast.
In conclusion, although there are many potential risks from clients, perspective, the existence of TopCoder community could be better choice for middle or small size companies. I believe that TopCoder will be more concentrate on ensure clients’ benefits in the future, not only ascribe to maintain reputation but also to obtain better monetary benefits by providing valuable services to its clients. Especially for TopCoder programmers who think higher money prize as the most appealing factor to them.
4. https://www.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking mobile app in which users can share resume, experiences and education to seek for a job position. LinkedIn is mainly used for professional network, and its main goal is to help people connect with recruiters and companies in a more convenient way. Recruiters can also search for specific professionals by searching key words or viewing people’s resume.
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ReplyDeleteQA3. While the remarks of TopCoder CEO Hughes seem to make economic sense, the TopCoder business model ignores the fact that the company is providing a service that is dependent on extremely high performance of humans. What might start as a fun competition for most participants, high performing individuals will at some point feel the need to be compensated fairly. As other class mates (e.g. Kory) also have stated, TopCoder seems to only compensate the relative few excellent performers. Many other programmers will at some point lose interest in the platform due to lack of compensation or the ability to contribute.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the business model is too narrowly focused on finding “the best” solution while really all is needed is an adequate solution that many programmers will be able to produce. The company limits supply even more by making code reusable and available to clients potentially eliminating the need for programmers. While reuse will avoid redundant work, which is a good thing, it will eliminate the need for many programmers in the long run.
To me it is not surprising this business was able to attract many programmers during the recession as this is the time that many programmers were looking for work with little jobs available. Many businesses were able to contract people for minimal compensation during the recession. People prefer more stability and will attain this when the economy is getting better. Though the community seems to have grown steadily I project a ceiling at some point with an overall decrease in programmer quality.
A more sustainable business model would create a stronger bond between client and coder. Many competitors have chosen a mediation business model that gives coders have the assurance that they’ll get paid and recognition for the job that they do. It will help those coders establishing long lasting relationships with clients, a system that will benefit most programmers, not just a handful.
QA4. http://www.tripadvisor.com/
TripAdvisor is one of my favorite information sharing websites. Besides it helping users to find the best deals on travel-related services such as hotels and flights, it also provides lots of information on what users can expect from this service. It has gathered a good amount of reviewers that share opinions that are often very helpful for decision making. Having reviewers rate the services, the application has helped improve the overall quality in the travel industry as bad service will receive low ratings. I’ve used this website many times and will continue to do so, especially when going to places I haven’t gone before.
Hey Manfred!
DeleteWhile I do see where you are coming from in that people need to be compensated and will lose interest, I can also see it going in the other direction. Competitions are actually really diving to some people and I could definitely see people doing it just for fun and in their spare time. Additionally, some people like learning and this is a great opportunity to learn a lot about coding. TopCoder compensates the few excellent coders, as you mentioned. I think this is a great incentive for people to try hard to do their best. Yes, it will be a turn off for some. However, I think it is best that TopCoder looks for the coders that enjoy coding. As I mentioned before, though, I do see where you are coming from and it is entirely possible that people will lose interest.
TopCoater’s business model is a little narrowly focused on finding “the best.” However, I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing; we all want the best. I completely agree with you that the company is limiting supply by reuse.
You know, I have heard of tripadvisor, but I have never personally used it. I’ll definitely have to try it out!
4. If I were to choose an information sharing app, I would probably choose Snapchat (www.snapchat.com). I choose this because, even though I know it’s kind of lame, I have just started using it.. It was launched in 2011 and it is a way to share videos and photos with your friends. These memories are only temporary in photo/video form. As of two years ago, up to 700 million snaps were sent a day. The problems I believe it is working to solve is making people less self conscious to be themselves because the pictures only last for a couple seconds.
I have to agree with Jennifer for most of this. I do believe that there are some dangers in the CEO's assumption of how the supply of programmers will be automatically created, but we can't treat TopCoder as a job for programmerse rather than a fun, side-project. Speaking as a member of the computer science major, there is no lack of enthusiasm for "coding for fun" types of events. One great example of this would be the Hack Arizona event that the U of A recently hosted. Not everyone wins and everyone who competes in the event understands that going into it, but these are people who genuinely enjoy coding for fun and challenging their coding abilities.
DeleteOne interesting thing to note is the skill rating system of TopCoder. I could potentially see this as a critical aspect of those recruiting for top software development companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Just like how a LinkedIn helps recruiters see how involved and accomplished an applicant is, a TopCoder profile can provide objective evidence of an applicant's coding talent in software development. I think that if TopCoder could determine a way to help facilitate the learning process for newbies in the community to add value to their TopCoder experience, this skills ratings systems could become more common in the future.
I completely agree that people prefer economic stability when trying to support themselves, but I don't believe that we can expect the people who want to participate in TopCoder competitions to view the competitions as only a way to support themselves. For many, participation is primarily a learning process, especially considering that they are able to reuse code that is known to work well.
4. https://www.reddit.com/
One example of collective action is reddit.com, the entertainment and social news networking website. The basic premise is that any member of the reddit community can post a picture, video, or article to the website and users will either 'upvote' or 'downvote' the material based on whether or not they think it is worthwhile. Posts with higher upvotes move to the top of the website, while posts that have downvotes will move down so they are less visible. The main premise of the website is that content that many people agree is entertaining or educational will become more visible, thus generating more views and discussion. However, one main problem that I see with this is that it can contribute to a narrowing mindset. I am pretty sure that the main demographic of reddit users are slightly liberal, 20s-30s year old, tech-savvy people. As the community upvotes posts that do not challenge their own point of views and downvotes those articles that they do not agree with, it leads to further polarization of the community. New members of the reddit community may view the top posts, not agree with any of them, and ultimately decide that the reddit content is not worth their time. After a while, the reddit community is filled more and more with people who all think similarly and those who would have challenged these views would have left the community. While reddit does work to solve the problem of having to go to multiple news sources or entertainment sources just to stay informed, it has one serious flaw in that it discourages opposing views.
3. TopCoder's "two-sided platform” model is a sufficient method to automatically create programmer supply. As an increasing number of organizations, both large and small, resort to TopCoder for their programming solutions, more and more programmers will join the community. This gives the organizations and programmers masses of exposure. From an organization’s perspective, they will have a multitude of solutions and/or programmers to choose from. This increases the chances of a successful resolution to their programming needs. For the programming community, it offers a great opportunity to boast their skills and potentially work for a desired organization.
ReplyDeleteAs TopCoder’s popularity rises, more organizations will look at TopCoder for top, short-term talent. This will entice the programming community to register with TopCoder and compete in the horde of competitions. With a competition-based style, programmers who have a strong desire to win are forced to create creative solutions. In order to retain the top programmers within the community, TopCoder should continue paying high rewards to the winners.
Although TopCoder’s model automatically creates programmer supply, there are some complications with this method. For example, if TopCoder’s community gets too large, some of the top-rated programmers may not want to participate anymore because the chances of winning are slimmer. Another problem with the growing community is not all of the programming solutions submitted may be reviewed. TopCoder does not have a large managerial staff and picking the best solution can become a time consuming task. To combat this, TopCoder may want to consider opening more advanced competitions to the higher-rated programmers. This will raise competitiveness and retention of the programming community.
4. Google.com/drive
As students, this is probably one of the most useful tools we have. We are required to work in groups in almost every class offered at Eller. Google Drive allows the team to work together without being physically together. This enables collaboration while working around everyone's schedule. It also permits students to share presentations, notes, and text books with ease. Some organizations use this tool for scheduling purposes. The users who need the information inputted into the drive can either have read or read/write permissions, which increases security of the information while still being effective in information sharing.
3. The CEO stated in the article that if TopCoder continues to increase the number of projects the company is working on, that a supply of programmers will be created. This model is true to a certain point, however they are missing a few things. Yes, in the short run this statement can be found true since there are most likely programmers who do not have any work with the company due to too many programmers working on a single project which is often not worth their time, which was one of the reasons stated in the article. The case mentioned the latent pool of 82.5% of the community who were interested enough in the TopCoder platform to register and have the potential to provide TopCoder with increase development under certain conditions. TopCoder failed to mention that the retention rate for the number of active accounts who would respond to a change in project supply. I think that even if the company increased their supply of projects, they would fail to get the full supply of programmers they want from the 82.5% pool. This would be due to those potential accounts having other full time jobs, not interested in the company after learning how it works, those who were turned off by the drop in prize amounts or those who are currently working for the competition already.
ReplyDelete4. https://www.trycapsule.com Capsule is a relatively new collaborative app that allows users to create groups in order to chat, share pictures and content. The idea behind capsule was if you were trying to plan an event with a group, you can use this app which had communicate as a group so all there content is streamlined through one conversations. Recently, Capsule has tailored their app to be primarily for sharing wedding photos. There primary demographic before shifting their application to wedding photography was brides and wedding parties. Since they so much usage from these groups, they transformed the app to primarily target and benefit their primary market.
3. The CEO of TopCoder believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply, but I just partial agree this assumption. At first, I agree that project demand will create programmer supply. But project demand is just one of the factors as Sijie said in her comment.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am concerning about is although TopCoder already have large massive programmers, the active members are really limited. According to my research, there are only 0.5% of programmers are active. Combined what Kory said “the top 5% of prize earners received approximately 80% of the total prize pool”, it comes one of the reasons that why the active members are very limited. Most of the members cannot earn any benefit (money and public reputation) from TocCoder which means that most of people they cannot treat it as a full-time job since there is no basic living allowance. Therefore, they are losing the motivation from the communities.
It is very important for TopCoder to think about some strategies to fully motivate their members. TopCoder may should categorize members and contests. Members have different levels of programming skill. TopCoder could hold different levels of contests for them and provide some rules like high-skilled programmers in the community cannot participate entry-level programming contests. So programmers can stay motivation and be active in the communities.
4. http://www.douban.com/
Douban is a Chinese SNS website as well as mobile app which allows their users to create content related to films, music and books and events in different cities. Whether description or comments by created by users. The core user is the urban youth who have a good educational background, including white-collar workers and college students. Also, it offers users a platform to communicate to other users who has same interest. For example, people who is a Star War’s fan can join a Star War group. In this group, they can discuss their favorite part of the movie and talk about what they want related the Star War. Douban helps users to communicate with people who have the same interests or people with common goals and aspirations.
If I were a senior manager at TopCoder, the main capabilities I believe are needed to succeed at running the firm are principally to distribute the amount of people who want to participate across the number of contests and work on resource allocation.
ReplyDeleteThe company needs to increase incentive amounts and change their target cultures expanding advertising efforts in developing countries. Foreign countries still find incentives attractive and increasing them could attract even more members. These foreign countries are highly populated and have favorable IT development potential that could definitely be driven to join the company by these incentives.
This will promote the high competitiveness and promote new and old members to stay active in the competitions. By maximizing the management staff there will be a result in reducing security risks and verify the high quality of all programs created. Allocating the company’s resources will allow to effective monitoring of peer performance evaluations.
These capabilities will allow TopCoder to be more profitable, and have higher product quality, which will lead to happier consumers who can give better feedback helping the company to achieve greatest success.
Capabilities change depending on company’s necessities, but I believe these kinds of capabilities can work for managing any traditional firm as well. Employees will always be more efficient in achieving company’s goals when receiving incentives, as well as expanding marketing efforts to different target markets will lead to better results in any company.
4) Trip Advisor App. http://www.tripadvisor.com/apps
TripAdvisor delivers a convenient way of getting the best deals for flights, hotels and restaurants whenever you’re planning for a trip worldwide. You can browse from over 45 million reviews and opinions for hotels and restaurant from all the tourist destinations around the world. You can also write your own review of the hotels you’ve stayed or the restaurants you’ve dined with. Aside from reviews, it also provides photos of the places and a My Save option that allows you to save the hotel restaurant or any attractions you’ve stumbled with. TripAdvisor app is completely free and can be downloaded directly on App Market.
1) The capabilities required for TopCoder are more unique that managing a traditional firm. This is mostly because the company’s business model is competition-based. It would be very difficult as a senior manager to find a balance between charging a client a low enough amount and providing the competitors with a high enough prize that they will choose to participate in the competitions instead of working a programming job. This balance must also allow TopCoder to remain profitable.
ReplyDeleteAnother capability that a senior manager must leverage is the community culture. Because all of the competitors volunteer to participate, it is of upmost importance that the senior managers keep the members happy. Otherwise, TopCoder still lose its supply of its community. Although culture is important in any business, TopCoder has a more unique challenge of managing a community of individuals across the globe. Even with their “norms” of contest integrity, fairness, transparency, and quality and their commitment to allowing the community member’s to voice their opinions on certain issues, if management makes a decision that the community strongly disagrees with, it could risk the future and profitability with TopCoder.
4) https://www.gofundme.com
Go fund me is a crowdfunding site that allows individuals, groups, and organizations to raise money. One simply must create a profile and post a description for what they are trying to raise money and what goal amount they are trying to reach. They can then share a link to their cause through various social media platforms in order to reach more people. Individuals wishing to donate can also visit gofundme.com and view different categories of fundraisers so they can find a cause in which they are interested. The most interesting part of gofundme.com is that it can aim to solve any problem an individual has that can be solved through donations.
1)
DeleteI agree with Heather Francisco. The capabilities required at work at Top Coder are unique compared to a traditional firm. A senior manager must be able to manage the community culture. In a more traditional business, the manager would be more focused on his/her employees. In this competition-based model, participates are doing most of the coding without direct supervisor. The manger must provide incentives for members to keep participating in competitions. The members can stop competing whenever they want for many reasons. In this in mind, the manager must be careful not to upset the community or they could many of their best programmers. Without many experienced programmer, the competitions could produce low quality results. A manager in a traditional business would not really have this problem. If a manager upset his/her employees, they most likely wouldn’t quit that same day. The manager has time to talk with the employees and fix the situation. This is just one example of how unique Top Coder is.
4)
https://www.parkingpanda.com/. The example I found is Parking Panda. It enables people to rent parking spaces, including private ones (like a person’s driveway or parking spot). The seller posts his parking space on the application and a driver can reserve the space for a certain date. This is particularly helpful when a large event is taking place and parking lots are packed. Drivers have an easier way to find parking and the seller gets paid. Both parties benefit from the transaction.
I agree with Heather that this situation does pose an interesting capabilities requirement. Especially her point regarding upsetting the community. A normal supervisor has a certain amount of leeway when it comes to workers opinion/satisfaction due to being a normal full-time employee. If a disagreement arises the supervisor has the ability to meet with the employee 1:1, or can choose to ignore the animosity (not the best response). Whereas a supervisor in this situation has to be concerned about the labor pool. As employees are not long-term/full-time, it is a lot easier for public opinion to damage the companies ability to source coders.
DeleteA concern I might have is regarding security, specifically information security since the work is being crowdsourced. I am assuming the risk is low if you have many individuals work on small sections of code, that way no one knows the big picture. But I would still be slightly concerned.
#4) https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm
The app I chose to focus on is Glassdoor. Glassdoor is an information sharing web application that allows user to post reviews/information on various companies and positions. This information then allows users to examine the experiences of prior interns/employees so that they can examine whether they would like to pursue a similar career.
2) I agree with Bryan Balcerzak and Ivan M. Gonzalez as they mentioned above that one of the biggest issues I would have with being a client for TopCoder would be the risks associated with the security of my company's intellectual property. For example, coming in as a new customer I would not be sure how much I could trust Topcoder. Another issue I would have with them is that they reuse platforms and code and maybe as a client I would not want the code or platforms given to me reused because of competitive reasons. They may have good reviews and perhaps have not had any issues with intellectual property being stolen or tampered with but trust is earned and everyone will be cautious at first. I would start off with small projects to give Topcoder a feel and see how they operate and if my intellectual property and security is safe with them. In addition, they have pursued a strong approach to have companies trust them by implementing a white paper that has confidential policies, guidelines, etc. Another measure Topcoder has taken is to allow companies to remain anonymous to not put them at risk. Lastly, if a client prefers then the competitors can be required to sign confidentiality agreements.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, as Ivan Mendez mentioned above, “Even after implementing policies and procedures that aim to prevent stealing ideas and intellectual property, it could be very difficult to track and detect which programmer has shared what information with whom.” WIth that being said, Topcoder has over 250,000 programmers and only about 35,000 have actually competed in contests. That means the remaining programmers are not making any money because they are not competing which could persuade them to possibly sell intellectual property. Given all the programmers Topcoder has it would be rather difficult to track down who might have sold or distributed the intellectual property. In addition out of the 250,000 programmers only about 0.5% actually win competitions on the regular. They are the only ones making money. This accounts to about 12,500 elite programmers who win most of the money and about 237,500 other programmers who do win any competitions or money. Therefore, this shows that many programmers could be tempted to sell or distribute intellectual property.
Overall, despite all these possible risks associated with Topcoder they have had huge success. They have managed to increase their pool of programmers to 250,000 and they add about 25,00 0 new programmers every year from across the world. They make it affordable for companies to acquire new system developments, programs, codes, etc. Thus, despite the risks associated with them they can be a good company to work with.
4. https://www.pinterest.com/
Pinterest is a web application that is also available for mobile devices in which people that have accounts can upload and manage images and videos. These imagines which are categorized as “pins” and are available on pinboards. Users can browse through the website and search for recipes, craft ideas, etc and save them by using the “pin it” button, For example, if a user finds a recipe he or she wants then all he or she has to do is pin it. The recipe will come with instructions and picture to help the user make it. Pinterest has millions of different content on its website which is all uploaded by its users. It is an excellent information sharing app. One issue they have is copyright and intellectual property rights. Users sometimes upload content that they do not have the right to. Pinterest is trying to prevent this by adding a “nopin” HTML meta tag which allows websites to not let users to upload content of them without their consent.
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ReplyDelete#2:As a client of TopCoder what would your main areas of concern be with this type of outsourcing? Has TopCoder done enough to overcome them?
ReplyDeleteThree of my classmates already mention that their biggest concern is Intellectual Property (IP) and Security issue during the development stage. As a project manager, Intellectual Property would definitely be the problem I most concerned, because it could hurt the fundamental component of the business. When I read the case, I have a strong feeling that the increasing number of developers would be a huge threat to both TopCoder and their clients. Even if TopCoder produced a white paper that detailed confidentiality policies, intellectual property assignment rules, but 250,000 developers are still too much to manage, just like Ivan mentioned, "TopCoder could not possibly manage all the communication and collaboration that happens between programmers as Taylor James Lorenson stated." And since the money reward is relatively high to the people from developing countries, a lot of developers are from those countries, which cause disordered management. In addition, from a law perspective, the regulations in the United States sometime are not efficient to manage the people worldwide.
For the people who did not win the money reward, they already have the develop guidelines which might give them potential chance to oversee the entire client project. Once they need to develop a similar software, they could possibly use this guideline to start that project. At the meantime, the TopCoder client's Intellectual Property would be compromised.
I think TopCoder might need more efficient ways to regulate all the developers, they could start a screen session for all the developers include previous project, work history etc., and they might need to encrypt all the coding history and project guidelines and to prevent giving access to unrelated people.
# 4: WeChat is a mobile text and voice messaging communication service developed by Tencent in China and It is one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active users. https://web.wechat.com/ This is their web interface, but most of the users are mobile based. Users can chat with their friend and also can create a group to chat with a group of people. By sharing all the pictures they took, and articles they wrote or liked in their profile, users could share their life with all of their friends. This software helps all the users build connections with new people and increase communication in a daily basis.
3.
ReplyDeleteIn the TopCoder case, the CEO believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply. After reading the case, I agree with demand is one of reasons to increase supply, but I don’t agree with demand will automatically create supply.
First, just like Kory stated above, the monetary incentive is very important indicator. Kory said in previous comment, he stated, “Top 5% of prize earners received approximately 80% of total prize pool, while the majority of TopCoder community members earned little or no money from competitions.” Compare to 5%, there are much higher percentage people who don’t get money from the competition. Since the competition would require them to spend lots of time to coding, people who have full time job may consider not participating in the competition. On the other hand, because of uncertainty of winning the competition, most people who have full time job are not willing to quit their job.
Second, in the case, TopCoder wants to increase the number of contests to let more people participate in. Along with this solution, new problem shows up. According to the case, “As more contest became available, the usual reviewers wanted to compete in the contests, rather than review them, leaving TopCoder scrambling to replacements.” On the other hand, since company increase number of contests, there will be tons of coding need to be reviewed by reviewer. There are two ways to solve this problems, one is to increase numbers of reviewers, but where to find qualified reviewers will become problem; the other solution might be assigned more works to reviewer, this will cost much more time.
Overall, I agree with demand is one of the reasons that supply increasing, but I don’t think it will automatically cause supply to increase.
4.http://nextdoor.com Nextdoor is an information-sharing app to allow people who live in the same neighborhood to share news with each other. After people register online, it will allow people to know what is happening in your neighborhood, like learning about an upcoming block party, or hearing about any accident happened around your neighborhood. Also, you can use this app to find people who are willing to help you with babysitting.
3. Despite the CEO’s confidence, I too am skeptical of this business model’s assumption moving forward. Several reasons for my skepticism, as presented in the write-up below, are as follows: financial implications, future competition, and retaining prestige over time.
ReplyDeleteWhile Hughes was working at Talan, one of the main problems he found was how expensive it was to recruit and train top programming talent. The TopCoder case article quotes him as saying “recruitment was an expensive and frustrating process because finding qualified programmers was time-consuming and talent was difficult to assess.” Through TopCoder he hoped to eliminate this problem and reduce expenses for all companies. While it has been successful thus far, I feel that the need for software is going to continue to grow exponentially faster than the talent available to develop it. Due to this, TopCoder will inevitably need to hire more platform managers to support all their operations and contests. The article also suggested that with each new platform manager hired, comes an average of an extra $100,000 in salary expenses for the company per year. Thus, project demand may in fact not lead to programmer supply increasing. With the increase in expenses to oversee all the extra demand, comes less ability to put up more/greater cash prizes.
Currently, TopCoder is the only company of its kind. The TopCoder case states that “As of December 2009, no competitors had elected to copy TopCoder’s business model by offering full-service software development through a competition-based approach.” While “no competition” has been beneficial for TopCoder, it may prove costly to them in the future. If a second or third company were to add this exact same business model TopCoder may find their talent pool significantly smaller. More programs and software needing to be developed means more potential profits to be made by competing businesses. This will lead to the inevitable competition to obtain them. Thus, more demand could actually reduce the available talent/skill at each company, rather than providing a growing supply of programmers to meet the demand.
As demand in the industry continues to grow, retaining talent and prestige could become a major problem for TopCoder. While TopCoder was the first to pioneer this creative business model, sometimes being first does not always work out to be the best. TopCoder may face a problem similar to that of American Idol. Allow me to explain, American Idol was a show that was revolutionary and for years had massive success. However, as others learned of the success to be had on talent shows like American Idol, variations such as America’s Got Talent, The Voice, So You think You Can Sing, etc. all formed to reap the same profits. Now, fifteen years later, the talent pools are very spread out across all the shows and American Idol no longer can claim they truly have the best talent. This, coupled with a now falling TV ratings, has led American Idol to announce this as their last season despite being the pioneers of this modern “talent audition.” I fear this very well may be the future for TopCoder. As competitors inevitably start up, making TopCoder no longer the only option for software development in competition style, talented programmers will spread out to other various companies and communities and TopCoders “prestige” will no longer exist like it did when it was the only provider of this service.
Ultimately, I believe Hughes’s assumption that project demand will automatically create programmer supply is an extremely optimistic and slightly naive view. With increasing demand and profits to be made, they will inevitably have more competition and expenses. Due to their business model, of competition based development, any competition from other companies could greatly divide the talent pool, causing TopCoder to loose both profits and prestige as they no longer have exclusive access to the best coding talent.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteQ 1)
ReplyDeleteAs a Senior Manager at TopCoder, I believe that the main capabilities to develop a successful firm would be to have an incentive based atmosphere, competition based approach, and more community outreach. These capabilities are all unique compared to the traditional firm, and help set TopCoder apart.
TopCoder already has something similar in place with the contests set up for their programming community. However, while this gives incentives for outsiders to take part for cash prizes, networking, and employment opportunities, it marginalizes the innovation of their own programmers from the other side of the business. As senior manager, I believe creating incentives for those working with clients directly could improve the quality of work while maintaining the company’s competitive nature.
That leads to the second capability, a competition based approach. As mentioned by Heather, what makes TopCoder so unique compared to traditional firms is their competition based business model. By holding contests for its programmers with prizes, they’re able to develop software that exceeds the quality, cost, and flexibility of their rivals. However, the article also mentions “5% of prize earners received approximately 80% of the total prize pool.” I believe that the company could reorganize its competitive approach by grouping together programmers of similar skill and giving them the opportunity to compete against others of similar stature, but increase the amount of money for the more advanced projects/rankings. This would make identifying superior talent much easier, while also addressing more complex questions/solutions for the customer.
Despite TopCoder having over 200,000 members since 2009, they’ve only had 35,000 “unique individuals” participate. While the results have proven to be successful, TopCoder isn’t reaching a vast majority of their programming community. If I were senior manger, I would take the time to orchestrate more deployments of notifications to all members to increase community turnout to competitions. Also, like I mentioned above, grouping the programmers by skill level would give more hope to people just starting out to get involved, while leaving bigger prize money for the more advanced programmers.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/find-my-friends/id466122094?mt=8
Find My Friends is an information sharing application, which relies on the location feature to track and monitor the location of friends and family. All you have to do is send an invite through your contacts or email address, wait for approval, and then you’ll be stalking people in no time. The application offers simple tracking features like notifying when someone has left a destination (or arrived), or just their simple coordinates. There was no documentation highlighting any urgent problems that needed fixing, however Find My Friends added a hide location button to ease any privacy concerns.
I definitely agree with Tyler and Heather about this being a nontraditional business and being very unique. Its design to involve contests for potential clients is interesting and I haven't seen anything like it (unless you count BCOM Case Competition but really shouldn't). Looking back at the fact that such a small percentage of users win the majority of the contests shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. What I truly appreciate about TopCoder is that it gives everyone competing a chance to improve upon their programming skills. I liked Tyler's idea of regrouping the programers by skill but it would leave out those programmers who are trying to get better and receive feedback. I think TopCoder senior managers should include a way for those less experienced individuals to compete and win prizes. Maybe hold contests that are categorized as "Easy" and if none of those programmers do an adequate job then they give the option for more experienced individuals to win the contest.
DeleteOverall, dividing the programmers by skill and by what competitions they want to compete in will create a better understanding for TopCoder. Specifically, it will help senior managers see what the users want/need to make them happy; improving, the community culture and user satisfaction. Not to mention creating a better, more satisfied culture can lead to better results for clients (improving upon client satisfaction).
An information sharing app I found interesting was HealthVault (https://www.healthvault.com/us/en/overview). HealthVault helps individuals gather, store, use, and share health information. They can use this app to share information about diseases, diagnoses, medications, health history, receive lab results, etc. You can use the app by either inputting data yourself, connecting it to other health/fitness applications or requesting the information from doctors, lab technicians, or other healthcare professionals. This type of information sharing can lead to a more updated health history, a better diagnosis, and even different more effective treatment options. HealthVault is working towards making it easier for doctors to receive all information and records to help further patient's health treatments and journeys. They are also constantly making information shared or put on the application more secure and safe for all users.
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DeleteWhile I agree that a competition based approach is definitely a unique capability that TopCoder has conquered, I have to disagree with some aspects of your opinion. For example, in my opinion, I would not group together programmers of similar skills but rather have a mix of expert and novice programmers. As mentioned in the reading, after competitions, coders would be evaluated and given feedback or criticism on their coding structures. I think that grouping together programmers that are at different levels of coding would be beneficial to both expert and novice coders. Experts coders would be able to better comprehend their coding techniques because as we've heard repeatedly time and time again, "people learn and understand better by teaching rather than by doing". Additionally, amateur coders would be able to learn more from expert coders and expand on their understanding of programming. This would then create a positive turnover of expert coders, because then novice coders would train the next generation of coders stepping in to the world of programming.
DeleteI also believe that this type of "mentor-mentee" program would allow for a higher retention rate of coders and expand the programming community. Although, incentives are a great way to bring in new coders, this type of capability would not provide an increased retention rate, since coders will follow those competitions with higher cash prizes. However, encouraging expert and novice coders to work together, in my opinion, would be an incentive all in itself to motivate these coders to compete and stay within the programming community.
https://www.gotinder.com/
Tinder is an "online dating" app. I put this in quotes because most college students use this as a means of "hooking up". Essentially, Tinder allows you to look at a person's profile and if you "like what you see", you can swipe their picture to the right and to the left if you're "just not into them". No one that you swipe right or left will ever know you swiped them unless they swiped right for you as well. In that case, you would be "matched" up and you'd be able to start chatting with them if you were interested in getting to know them. You can also set your preferences like a specific age range you are interested in, how far or close in distance you are looking to find someone, or if you are looking to be matched up with males, females, or both. Tinder has recently added a new features in which you can now send giphy gifs. These are usually 2 to 3 second video clips that normally are used to share a feeling or emotion (like an upgraded emoji). One major problem with Tinder is debugging. Usually the app will freeze your phone, at random, and you will have to close the app numerous times. Also, sometimes you will send a chat and the person on the other side will never receive your message which makes it hard to "date" or "hook up". In conclusion, Tinder is the ideal "getting to know someone" app for college students looking to have "fun" or a "good time".
Suzi,
DeleteHaving an "Easy" competition category could work and help TopCoder assign their resources out appropriately. Many experienced coders wouldn't want to compete in the easy competition because it may not be worth their time for the smaller prizes. It's like having your best employees working on the biggest/most important cases and having your news employees work on the smaller cases to gain more experience.
Q3.
ReplyDeleteUnlike many of the posts before mine, I think that while not certain, there is a strong argument for the programmer supply to grow with project demand at TopCoder. At the business level, an increase in project demand will lead to more money available to give in prizes, which will naturally increase the supply of programmers. If the prize money can grow, people will continue to code and try to win, I mean people spend their time (money) on things with significantly less winning odds.
However, I disagree with Kory’s idea that programmers that have not won big prize money will completely leave the community. Coding for many is a passion and hobby rather than work, and I believe that the community will grow with the projects. More projects also mean a wider variety of coding types, which will in turn appeal to a larger number of programmers who may be more suited to that type of work. I think that growth will exponentially increase with programmers from around the world being able to show off their expertise. Most coders take pride in their work and want to be able to compete to show it off.
However, I do agree with Taylor’s point that the increasing level of projects and programmers, will put a greater stress level on the employees of TopCoder. With significant growth, more projects and competition submissions will have to be reviewed, which will put further strain on the company, if they are unable to scale appropriately. If submissions cannot all be effectively reviews, it will undoubtedly lead to a frustrated community, which would not be good.
Overall I think that the supply will definitely increase with the number of projects. Even if it doesn’t grow as fast, current competitors will naturally work extra in order to attain the increase in prize money. However, it is important for TopCoder to be prepared for this growth and to be able to scale with it effectively. If they are not able to do this, it could lead to some extreme problems.
Q4 (https://www.taskrabbit.com/)
TaskRabbit is an app that has taken the “Uber” platform and used it to apply to odd jobs. For example, if you are an elderly person who needs help moving a couch, you could simply “hire” someone from this task with a predetermined price. The app includes tasks such as cleaning, shopping + delivery, handyman, moving help, and general help. The app works similar to Uber and Lyft, in the sense the people apply as contractors for TaskRabbit and have self-assigned hours and tasks. The contractors then bid on tasks that they want to perform, and take ~80% of the price, with the other ~20% going to TaskRabbit.
Some recent problems that TaskRabbit was having was a decline in the completed and accepting of tasks, which led them to start hiring contractors as “de-facto employees”. This of course has led to income tax issues, and other problems that arise from hiring as opposed to contracting.
2. As a client, I would worry about intellectual property and security. Since the coders are people who enter contests, the contestants may reuse some if not all coding from a different client or reuse our coding for another client. Also as a new client, I wouldn't be sure to trust the creation of the coding by people outside the company. I wouldn't know what these people do for a living. Do these people do coding for a living or is this just a hobby? If it's a hobby. I would feel uncomfortable leaving a big project to someone who might not be professionally trained.
ReplyDeleteAnother concern I would have is the amount of people entering to compete. Thousands of people compete, so there may be chance that someone is getting help from someone else who has competed and won. This could lead to issues of copying intellectual property. Hundreds of thousands of contestants is hard to keep track of.
TopCoder has been doing a good job overcoming issues with outsourcing. They do provide a catalog of codes, but not complicated ones that were used by other clients and thus preventing copying.
4. Miiverse (miiverse.nintendo.net). Miiverse is an information sharing service for the Nintendo 3DS family and the Nintendo Wii U video game consoles. You can access this on a Nintendo 3Ds, Wii U, or any web browser. The service allows people with a Nintendo Network ID to post comments about games such as hints or questions. If you are using a video game console, you can also post a screen shot of the game or application you are currently using. A current issue is that you have to wait a few minutes to post again on the same game community you are on. Until this is fixed, Nintendo put a comment limit per day s they stop once the maximum is reached. The service allows yu to follow other players and become friends so you can play multiplayer games with them.
3. Saying project demand will automatically generate programmer supply is very bold of TopCoder’s CEO. I have my doubts about that statement, and using that as a core business assumption gives me doubts about TopCoder as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThe creation of supply would be very tough to make automatic. Just because there are projects out there that need doing does not mean programmers will jump at all of them. The first and most obvious reason is pay. If the money isn’t worth the programmers’ time, they won’t participate in the contest. Gasper, one of the programmers in the article, makes it clear multiple times that he’s mainly in it for the money, and that he would jump to a competitor if the pay was better. If TopCoder can’t keep the prize money up, it’s not a stretch to say that they will have difficulties retaining some of the top talent within the community. If another recession hits like that of 2008 where TopCoder was forced to cut prize money, they may well lose some of their top talents. You may have other programmers come up to fill the void, but they may be of lesser skill and experience.
That brings me to my next point, the quality of the supply of programmers. Not all programmers are created equally, and it can’t be expected that all programmers will be perfect substitutes for those they replace. TopCoder may always be able to have someone working on one of their projects regardless of pay, but is that someone going to deliver a high quality solution? Many CIOs go to TopCoder because it produces solutions that are just as viable as industry competitors, but at a much lower price. If there is a dip in quality, some CIOs would stop using TopCoder. Every company has to work to retain top employees, but in such a loose community, it may be difficult to assure quality if those top contributors leave. Risking the business model on the assumption that every programmer is as good as the last one is
4. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ Rotten Tomatoes is a well-known site that aggregates the reviews of movies and TV shows and combines them into a single score so users can compare different films and episodes. It has a score for both professional reviews and community reviews, so that a user can get a sense of how elite critics and the general public view it. There are also written reviews from both categories of people. Reviewing movies is inherently a subjective exercise, and comes with a wide range of variation. Rotten Tomatoes seeks to eliminate that through building consensus, and aggregating all of the reviews into one score. It is one of the most trusted sources for movie reviews and ratings.
3.
ReplyDeleteCEO, Hughes fundamentally believed that contest demand would spur the supply of TopCoder participants which I agree with his core assumption of the business model because they are growing in exponential way. According to the article, from 2001 and 2009, each year TopCoder added 25,000 new computer programmers to its community. From statistical record (Exhibit 4), they are booming their participants with in short period of time. If they were not doing that, they will be out of business. They already have over 200,000 members. In the above comments, Mr. Chinn said that because of diminishing returns programmers will yield lower returns, lower quality and increased numbers of bugs. This is open community opportunities contest, in any contest the product or result with poor quality will not be counted. So, each and every contestant will be devoted for their quality innovation because it is the great opportunities for retention in company or any other 500 fortune company in the world. They also have referral program for the programmers, who would in turn create high quality software solutions.
I am absolutely agree with the members, Wu when he commented, incentive is the most attractive thing, who is making enough money compared with other company because this is spare money to your spare time which they can earn up to as much as $5000 to $10,000 per match for tournament winners. In addition, every contestant that participate can received an objective numerical rating for their performance against the global talent pool, providing a clear signal to TopCoder and others about the talent in the community. It is true that sustainable business model would create a stronger relation between client and coder.
Both members and TopCoder are benefited. All the programmers and developers are benefited from the incentives of quality performance, creativity and open innovation and get chances to move forward. For the TopCoder, they don’t have worry about
- annual salaries for the programmers,
- No work space for programmers and developers
- Flexibility and cost reduction
- Unique recruitment approach
If TopCoder maintain or keep continuous track of contests and activities, they will optimize number of programmers participating in competitions and their project demand continuous flow of programmer supply.
Q. 4
https://skiplagged.com/
‘Skiplagged’ is a app that can give you tremendous amount of discounts on airfares. This app can help both for the frequent travelers and as well as occasional travelers. Skiplagged is one site that shows you these hidden deals also called ‘hidden city ticketing’. Skiplagged reveal the secrets of the airlines industry by finding airfares not found in any other airlines industries which you can save up to 80%. For instance, this is how the Skiplagged works, when you look a non stop airfare from San Francisco to Dallas. It might cost you over $300 one way, but a fare on the same airline form San Francisco to Huston with a stop in Dallas might be $150. So, you can buy the flight to Houston and ditch the plane in Dallas. What a amazing app.
2. This post is in response to those that posted about the intellectual and security concerns that a client may have. While I agree with the importance of protecting the intellectual property of clients that prefer to use the TopCoder community, this concern is was not my initial concern when reading this question. As described in the TopCoder case, the organization requires the coders to sign a confidentiality agreement before they even begin working on an experimental model of what they could offer the customer. There is always that concern that an outside service could release intellectual content to any company that pays enough. However, when a confidentiality agreement is signed, the service provider is legally bound to the contract. And if the contract is broken, and intellectual content is shared, the service provider will face the harsh consequences.
ReplyDeleteThe largest concern that I would have as a client is the possibility of receiving a product from TopCoder with malicious code that is not easily detectable. TopCoder outsources their services to countries that may have malintent towards United States based companies. TopCoder has attracted competitors from China, Russia, and India, all of which are not necessarily viewed as US allies in today’s global situation. To combat the possibility of malicious code entering the client’s product, TopCoder has enacted a peer-review process that is intended to catch possible harmful lines of code. This is a positive approach to preventing malicious code. However, I am still not sure how full proof this review process is. If I were a client, I would look into how effective the peer-review process is at preventing malicious code from being looked over when my company receives the final product.
4. http://www.instructables.com/
Instructables is an information sharing website/app that allows users to post, view, and comment on various forms of Do It Yourself (DIY) projects. Users can post original DIY projects that they have found to make their life better, their homes more visually appealing and their food taste better. Once a user posts a DIY project, other users can search for a DIY project that resembles what they might want to produce. Once a user finds a project they would like to complete, they would simply follow the written and visual directions that the original poster provided. This website is simply used to promote creativity and information sharing amongst the Instructable community.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete3.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the TopCoder’s CEO’s belief that project demand will automatically create programmer supply, most of my classmates disagreed. However, in my opinion, this statement is correct if TopCoder can create a good competitive environment. With a well-developed platform and a good management team, TopCoder can generate a big pool of programmers to satisfy the needs of project. More projects will raise the prizes, which will attract more programmers. Therefore, I believe the project demand will automatically create the programmer supply. I can apply the economic theory of supply and demand to support my idea.
To answer the concern about the financial incentives as well as the quality of programmers, I can refer to the demand-supply economic model. In a free competitive environment, best programmers will earn the best deals. On the other hands, the firms that are willing to pay the most can find the top programmers. This is a win-win business, if the programmers are not good enough, they cannot earn as much as their folks. The same situation happens in tradition business model where only the top performers can earn high salaries. Thus, I believe the claim that TopCoder’s platform would have trouble with financial incentives is not vivid.
However, as mentioned before, this economic theory can only apply to “free markets”, where there is no barrier and the resources would be allocated effectively. The case study has indicated the major problem of TopCoder’s platform which is “unlike a typical software development firm, TopCoder could not assign specific people to a task or project”. This means it is very difficult for TopCoder to match all the programmers to the suitable projects. However, TopCoder has a talented management team to solve this problem. Their solution is adjusting the prize amount, the duration and timing requirement, the project scope, and the number of other contest running concurrently so that every programmers can find the right projects that match their expectations.
4.
https://www.blablacar.com/
BlaBlaCar is a ride sharing platform, which is supposed to link drivers with empty seats to customers travelling in the same route. The apps is serving more than 20 million members across 20 countries. Similar to Uber, BlaBlaCar connects drivers and passengers through its online platform. In compare to tradition taxi industry, this type of operations cannot only save the costs of the ride but also provide flexibility for both the drivers and the passengers. However, like other ride sharing apps, BlaBlaCar is facing many problems related to regulations and safety. There is a debate that whether peer-to-peer ride sharing mobile applications like BlaBlaCar need to follow the taxi regulations. On the other hand, the safety concerns have been rising following the increasing number of violations that customers of this business model have experienced.
Top Coder is utilizing a model that is used in every business, all plans and every event; they are using multiple groups, different people, many brains, and vast expertise in order to accomplish a goal. Collective action and information sharing is an age-old model that has simply been modified to fit software programming needs.
ReplyDeleteThrow back to the SATs…. TopCoder : software programing :: _________ : event.
If broken down in to its simplest form, solving a complex problem through programming is like putting on a very large complex event. Top Coder can be compared to a party-planning service. The gala or event being planned is equivalent to the software being created. The suppliers being used (caterers, wait-staff, bartenders, band, florists etc.) are like the programmers writing code. Top Coder is and its management are the head honchos orchestrating the whole event insuring their client is pleased with the final product. In order to get the best price and quality, suppliers have to compete to be apart of the event. In Top Coder, in order for programmers to win prizes and payments they too have to compete for the best designs or most bug discoveries.
The difference and uniqueness of Top Coder’s collective action design is that it is all virtual. It is hard to have caterers form Tokyo supplying your hors d’oeuvres for a celebration in Los Angeles. With Top Coder’s adaptive model they can have endless amounts of suppliers and programmers (granted they have the appropriate skills) to work on their projects. Location and time zone aren’t an issue.
Top Coder has been the first IT Company to utilize the minds of others in order to turn a profit. This model is even used here at Eller. We participate in case competitions either voluntarily (Altria, Goldman Sachs) or for class (BCOM and MIS 304). These companies incentivize us to produce great ideas (great ideas can be like great code) to solve complex problems in their company, for the customers or for the future. This is another example of collective action and information sharing. Top Coder isn’t the first company to come up with this idea; they just might be the first ones to apply it on such a large scale.
Top Coder has a well-situated set of programmers now. An increase in the amount of projects from clients in my opinion will not unearth a whole new set of programmers. Instead, Top Coder will have a shortage of programmers. Too much demand and not enough supply of talent. Working programmers will become even more selective with their competition choices after an influx of client projects available. The next big thing Top coder needs to focus on is employees. They either need to work on retaining their talented programmers by growing with them as they age (find a spouse, have kids, find a second job) or they need to understand that they might have high turnover rate in employees and therefore need to find the best place to mine these individuals.
The process is working for Top Coder so far, we should let them continue to grow and set an example for future collective information sharing businesses.
Rebecca, I really liked your example of how TopCoder can be related to a large, complex event. However, I like to think that all the suppliers could be broken down even further. Specifically, the programmers can be thought of as one type of supplier, let's say caterers. The different caterers can "tryout" and give the event planner (TopCoder) samples of their food (code) and send out bids/prices (compete in contests with cash prizes) to give the event planner (TopCoder) the chance to choose a caterer (winner) that will satisfy the customer (client) the most. Your example was very good and really made me think about how TopCoder is a great example for collaborative action through different supply streams, regions, etc.
DeleteI also really enjoyed seeing that we had similar thoughts on how TopCoder is using a commonly used business strategy (collaborative thinking and action). I liked how we both correlated that even here in Eller, we have case competitions where different companies come in as clients and see what great ideas we, as students, have to offer.
Good job :)
Suzi,
DeleteWe did have very similar ideas. I enjoyed your taking my event planning idea and running with it. Glad to know that analogy makes sense to someone else too.
Thanks for the response!
3. Regarding TopCoder CEO’s statement that project demand will automatically create programmer supply, along with Taylor Delgado I have doubts. Let’s remember that the primary motivation for these projects are the incentives attached to them. Without those, programmers are likely to have little to no interest in the projects. Given the challenges with each project and the competition environment it is expected that by providing project demand, programmer supply would not be an issue. But the process is not automated under any circumstances. TopCoder’s success relies solely on being able to bring together some of the world’s most diverse and talented coders. In order to attract these individuals, they need to be able to create a win-win situation for the programmers as well. Whether is be cash prices, bragging rights or professional experience, these are the incentives that are attracting these talented professionals.
ReplyDeleteThe case made a clear statement regarding what happened to the programming environment when price cuts were made. The success rate and quality of projects will be based on keeping your community happy. If TopCoder would not be able to do such thing, they would face the same situation they faced when price cuts were made. An unhappy community that even resulted in loosing some of your best programmers. In my opinion, the core assumption of the business model should not be creating project demand, but creating project incentives. By focusing on what incentives drives your community whether it be cash prices or professional recognition, your community will be more inclined to participate in more projects and continue to deliver high quality code.
4. www.craigslist.org
Craigslist is a classified advertisements website and app used to connect customers and sellers. Based on geographic location, customers can search for jobs, housing, goods for sale or even services within a given city. In addition, businesses or individuals can also post these same services or goods. Founded in 1995, Craigslist has not expanded to over 570 cities in 70 different countries. Although the application offers a number of services to users, it is primarily known for the sale of new and used goods. Whether your looking to get inexpensive furniture that may be lightly used or get rid of that extra clothing taking up space in your closet, Craigslist can help you. One of the biggest problems craigslist faces is the dangers that come from contacting other people as well as scammers. When selling something simple such as an iPhone or watch, you could very easily meet at a public place such as Starbucks to see the item and make the exchange safely. But when looking at things such as furniture, members often find themselves skeptical stepping into someone else’s home or inviting a stranger into theirs for safety reasons. In addition, as an active user, today more than ever many scammers are getting on craigslist getting people to ship their items for sale for a large sum of money that ultimately turns into a scam.
2. As a client of TopCoder what would your main areas of concern be with this type of outsourcing? Has TopCoder done enough to overcome them?
ReplyDeleteAs a client of TopCoder, specifically as a start-up business owner, I would have major concern with the security of my intellectual property. Many business ideas have been stolen or copied, thus diminishing a company's recognition for originality. This in the end has led to a loss in a company’s profits and market share. That being said, outsourcing your ideas and problems to TopCoder for a community of members to conceptualize leaves room for disaster, I believe. The case concerns as “community member who built the component might attempt to prohibit its use or ask the client to pay considerable royalties” (9). They also state “some clients were concerned that a solution submitted by a community member could be stolen, copyrighted, or taken from open-source software projects, thus potentially opening the door for intellectual property disputes” (9). Allowing a group of unfamiliar and possibly untrustworthy people to decide your business solution from information that you have provided can open the door for the use of your business plan or problem to reinvent it as their own. I feel that this community of members of TopCoder may obtain too much information about a company.
TopCoder is a renowned business, therefore they have thought of solutions to resolve this potential security and intellectual property issue. “TopCoder produced a white paper that detailed confidentiality policies, intellectual property assignment rules, and TopCoder’s modular approach to software development” (9). Any security issues between a company and the community coder could also affect TopCoder. In the end, it could be TopCoder taken to court by a client instead of the community of coders who have acted unethically. Therefore, it is only right that TopCoder take legal action when it comes to the protection of their clients, community members, and themselves. They have forced all their community members to sign a “standard competition confidentiality agreement” (9) to protect from business information being released to their client’s competitors.
3. The CEO believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply. What are the reasons for doubting or agreeing with this core assumption of the business model?
As business students at a prestigious business school we are taught the ins and outs of supply and demand. For that reason I disagree with the TopCoder CEO’s belief. TopCoder works mainly with people and their desire and ability to perform. And since we are all MIS majors we some idea of programming and software and how long it can take and how frustrating and tedious it can be. Therefore I believe with the increase in projects, TopCoder will see a decreasing supply in programmer ideas. Like a questionnaire, if you have way too many questions for people to answer, they will start to lose interest and less and less people will answer your questions on the questionnaire. I believe this is the same for an increase in project demand, if there is too many projects to compete for, programmers will become overwhelmed and lose interest in looking through the projects to find the right one that they feel best suits their ability to win. But in the end this is about money, coders perform for the chance to win a large monetary prize. So I believe that not the much of quantity of supply will increase but the programmer’s quality. Those that are highly experienced and great programmers will continue to compete in these projects because it may be easier for them. They will see a range of difficulty in the project demand increase thus giving the better programmers a better chance of winning the prize. In conclusion, I feel that project demand will not automatically create programmer supply but create better programmer quality instead.
2. For a client outsourcing their work to the tech firm Top Coder, I agree with many of my peers (Ivan, Bryan, and Juwen) that have stated that perhaps the biggest problem with TopCoders' competitive based approach is security. The biggest problem in my opinion is giving your access to a company to over 35,000 programmers, who are all fighting tooth and nail in order to win the competition. That is a lot of people to expose your companies private files and business operation to. It only takes one person to look at your program, come up with a better way to do it, and start up their own company. There are obviously a group of people, about 12,500 people that have won contests that could have the skill to start their own business. As Brian and Carlos both pointed out, the security could be in even more trouble because the competition is so fierce among employees. From the article, it sounds like a very cut throat competition that could leave some coders desperate. They say that some of the top coders are making $300,000 a year, some are making $100,000, and most less than that. With that much competition, some of the guys feeling left out might be taking advantage of the situation they are given.
ReplyDeleteWith all that being said, it probably sounds like I think TopCoder is a terrible business. On the contrary, I think it is a brilliant bussiness model, and they have taken great steps to make sure that the security of their clients is not breached. Through the use of their white sheet confidentiality agreement, use of peer review, and try out phases for companies, I think they have taken the necessary steps to curb this problem. They have created a much needed legal document that will prevent information from being shared. Also, they use peer review, which consists of their top programmers running through the program. I believe this is an ingenious step, because these people have less incentive to steal information to make more money. They are already making so much money from Top programmer that they are less of a threat. Finally, by using a try-out phase for companies, companies can give TopCoder hypothetical problems to see how the system would work. For companies that are worried about their sensitive information being used this is a great way to gain the client's trust. There is room for improvement, but I believe TopCoder has done a great job putting those worries at ease.
4. www.grouppme.com/
Groupme is a fantastic device available on both Android and IOS that provides a new way to communicate with your peers. It is kind of like being in a group message, but with more features. It allows you to like and highlight important information that people say in the group. It also supports many different types of media sharing through the app, so your group stays up to date with everything you do. I have been using this app for group projects for several years and believe it has been a great communication tool for collaborative work. It is important, in my opinion, to have business type work in a separate app, so you know its important when you see a Groupme notification. It also helps me keep track of the work my group has been doing and helped me stay productive. I would recommend any group not using it to check it out.
3. The CEO believes that project demand will automatically create programmer supply. There are a few reasons as to why this is correct. For starters there was an incentive placed in order to increase the amount of programmers that are active. This incentive was critical as majority of the programmers were not compensated from competition. A programmer could not consider being a programmer as a full time job without compensation. I believe that TopCoders reasons for motivating participants was wise because it increases the probability of receiving a highly skilled programmer. The quality of the current Programers at TopCoder is high, however it will be difficult for TopCoder to keep these high quality programmers with little to know pay. I believe that as long as TopCoder compensates their programmers they will be able to keep their high quality coders.
ReplyDelete4. https://whisper.sh Whisper is a collaborate app which allows users to post meme like images. Whisper is entirely anonymous so users cannot see who posted what photo. Rather than having friends, on Whisper you post to people near your geographic area. When you post on Whisper, you choose a picture and outline it with a message. The picture can be any picture you’d like. Once posted users, can heart your posts or even comment on them.
Answering question 3, I too am skeptical on the viability of the CEO’s business plan with the core assumption that project demand automatically creating programmer supply. While conceptually this notion may hold true, using this as a fundamental assumption in the business plan will strain TopCoder’s resources.
ReplyDeleteAs many other students have already mentioned above, monetary prizes are a major incentive in motivating community members to contribute submissions to projects and other content. In the TopCoder case, it’s noted that the top 5% of prize earners received approximately 80% of the total prize pool and the majority of the TopCoder community earned little or no money. Especially since just between 2001 and 2009, TopCoder paid over $20 million in prizes and peer review money, the CEO’s assumption of project creation drives programmer supply is not a financially sustainable option. Additionally, since the likelihood of winning any monetary prizes is slim for new TopCoder community members, as the top 5% of prize earners win the majority of the money, new interested programmers may pursue other job opportunities rather than participate and spend time creating submissions.
Overall, although while the CEO’s assumption that projects generate programmers supply may hold true in theory, it’s inherently flawed due to the financial and implementation issues.
4. An example of a collective action or an information sharing app that everyone is familiar with is Facebook (Facebook.com) or any other popular social media hub. Specifically in regards to Facebook, as of March 31st, 2015, there are 1.44 billion monthly active users. Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to them.”
Facebook amplifies the connections and relationships between people virtualizing the experience: allowing people around the world to talk, connect and communicate. On Facebook, events and groups can be created to share causes and ideas, allowing for idea generation and collaboration for people to achieve common goals.
1. As a senior manager at TopCoder, I believe you must have a higher level of capabilities then the traditional form. A company like Top Coder requires skills not typically required with other jobs and professions. The business culture at TopCoder is more competitive based model then others seen in similar industries. I assume TopCoder believes the competition builds better work and is overall benefit for the company. At the same time this can cause for a hostile work environment and make employees dislike their workplace. The main capabilities I would need to develop to succeed at running the firm would be a balance of competiveness and employee happiness. Competitiveness can be accomplished by offering salary bonuses for outstanding performance. Employee happiness can be accomplished by doing employee appreciation and team building activities, these can show employees how they are appreciated at TopCoder and can improve their performance in their workplace.
ReplyDelete4. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/. This is a website that allows for students to rate their professors after taking a course with them, this is beneficial for both students and professors. Students can visit the site and look up their professor to see their teaching style, use of textbook and other important information. Professors can view the site, see comments about themselves to see how they can improve, what students liked about them, and other comments that students may have left. If for some reason a professor thinks a comment is unfair, they can appeal the submission.
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