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Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#31

Post by analog31 »

undoware wrote: post #11

[pulls up chair, sits backwards] OK so this is a question I'm arguably qualified to talk about -- I focus on usability and promoting it within a large tech company. The problem that I see a lot is that engineers are not well-versed in what I will call 'imaginative empathy'[1], which, as I define it, is the ability to creatively conceive of end-user needs by reflecting at length on who those people are, what they desi…

These are some good insights, and I'm glad you're doing this work. And part of putting yourself in the mindset of the user is understanding that in many cases they are not using your software by choice, but because it stands between them and something that they need, such as a job, health care, personal finances, use of their car, and so forth. Often these things happen under moderately stressful circumstances.

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#34

Post by umren »

LinuxBender wrote: post #10
faangiq wrote: post #9

These are not dev choices these are PM / biz dude choices. Devs are code monkeys who do what they’re told.

This is the sad truth, especially in companies the size of the ones listed and many more like them. I would be curious what would happen if a company gave developers at least some power to decide priorities for a quarter.

I worked for 2 years in a company like this.

We build 350 microservices, we used all types of databases that existed, we even had a team that decided to make their own object database because after an extensive research "all current ones aren't good enough".

Every sprint people would discuss architecture and we should improve it, because we had full freedom to eliminate our technical debt.

We researched and developed our own "patented" distributed RBAC subsystem.

Product is still in alpha and it seems to me its too slow to release on market.

It's for B2E sector and the backlog for any decent sale is still to big to have a meaningful usage.

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#35

Post by aristofun »

Brutal truth is that users are not gonna pay for cleaner UX or faster page loads, while achieving better quality in most real life cases is exponentially expensive (imagine rewriting Facebook with optimized vanilla js).

So where’s the money?

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#36

Post by errantmind »

The examples you give are large companies. Oftentimes the people who made those companies great have already left, leaving the dregs behind, who then hire more like them. Just because Blizzard made good games a decade ago (or longer), doesn't mean they can still make good games.

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#37

Post by jjeaff »

justinlink wrote: post #15

As a developer on a very small team for many years now for a B2B product, I've spent years now filling feature requests, adding new features, and enhancing the product. The users seem to be getting more demanding and less thankful/polite. One of my least favorite days are when we announce new features. Nobody takes a minute to say thank you, instead they want to submit new requests or demand updates on something prev…

Let's not forget those users that can't live without feature X and then after you build it, never use it, or end up leaving anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#38

Post by alexdowad »

Hmm. Were the "old days" really all that great, though?

You talk about websites which use 10MB of JS to display a 32KB article. I think what we have seen historically is that most software developers will work only as hard as necessary to make their products acceptably performant on their testing hardware. When computers were slow, people worked harder to optimize the software. When the machines got fast, people weren't forced to optimize as much, so they didn't.

Do I like that? No. Is it understandable (and perhaps even predictable) that things will go that way? Yes.

You also mention the proliferation of dark patterns in various online services and even products like MS Windows. Well, one thing that has become clear is that many consumers really like products which are free, and which they can obtain with little effort. If an online service employs 'dark patterns' to get what they want out of their users, but it is free, the users might actually prefer that to a paid service. So while it is regrettable, it's not strange or surprising that such things are happening.

I suspect that the software field does not, as you suggest, "attract people who are adamant that their customers do it their way". Probably these developments which you speak of are just a combination of human nature playing out as it always does, plus random events, plus the ongoing advancement of technology which makes it possible for people to do (sometimes undesirable) things which they would have done earlier if they could, but they couldn't until now.

I would love to hear evidence to the contrary, however.

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#39

Post by A_non_e-moose »

wanderer2323 wrote: post #20

Developers are not hostile to their users, businesses are. To add to good points made in other posts (users are not customers, time to market is more important than polish): business does not serve customer's (expressed) needs, it serves customer's (revealed) buying behaviour. In other words, who cares if users say they are unhappy as long as the money is rolling in.

What if those principles are applied in a market where customers are forced to buy the product because it is essential and they have little to no choice in product providers?

Some philosophies would say that's a market opportunity, others would say it's up to the government to regulate, others would advocate for a different corporate management style. Has any been effectively implemented or worked in the past?

Re: Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

#40

Post by ummonk »

alexdowad wrote: post #38

Hmm. Were the "old days" really all that great, though? You talk about websites which use 10MB of JS to display a 32KB article. I think what we have seen historically is that most software developers will work only as hard as necessary to make their products acceptably performant on their testing hardware. When computers were slow, people worked harder to optimize the software. When the machines got fast, people were…

To add to that, websites load far faster today than they did in the dial up era, or even the early DSL era. Likewise, computers used to start up way slower before the advent of SSDs. People who complain about bloat need to get some perspective about how much hardware gains have outstripped the proliferation of bloat.
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