Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

By way of background, we sell STEM electronics hardware that has really low margin because it's designed to be excessively priced for education.

This need to be extremely efficient has caused us to do all sorts of things, like create shipping and fulfillment robots that pick products from the shelf and help our pickers and packers out[1].

I found that it's a lot harder to do things with atoms than just software. As a company, we have been able to automate a bunch of work that would have been previously done by an office admin. I believe this style of white-collar jobs is particularly vulnerable to automation.

I have two main concerns. One is that the folks with white-collar jobs that would buy our products will no longer have the economic means to do so. The second is, well, a lot of our products are STEM-based, and I'm worried that educators will no longer feel the need to teach coding and electronics, because in the future there may be the view that such work will simply be done by machines, and all what a student really needs to be able to learn to do is learn how to communicate in a clear manner using english...

1. https://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/pages/the-raspberry-pi-...



>designed to be excessively priced for education.

Do you mean accessibly priced?


A price low enough to be within reach of edu customers, without sacrificing value or quality.

This is achieved by reducing margins, and when you reduce margins, as a business you have to do more with less.


>A price low enough to be within reach of edu customers,

That's what I thought, so do not say excessively since that would mean overpriced because it is excessive.

Accessively sounds like almost the same word but means something can be easily accessed, is more within reach or "not high priced".

Perhaps the best wording might be "affordable" for edu customers.


Yup, I mean "accessibly priced". Auto-correct or STT fail.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: