41–50 of 68 posts
The best solution would be a deeper collaboration between product and dev, but it's difficult to make it work since both profiles have different drives and goals.
I’m half of these examples (Reddit, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more), the user is not the customer. Products will always optimize for the customer and do the bare minimum to maintain their product. The customer is advertisers for these platforms, not users. The users are the product. The other aspect though is that devs don’t test in bad conditions. Most modern dev is done on a top of the line MacBook on a f…
I think the first point is so important. A good example is news sites. They aren't optimized for delivering news articles, if they were they'd look like FTP servers. News sites are instead built to track you, serve ads, and sell subscriptions.
I think the mentality that the customer is always right is honestly bullshit and companies sometimes need to tell the customer to shut up or ignore them because no matter what some people will never be satisfied.
Low supply of developers, users being too ignorant about how software works. Personally, all I would let users have is spreadsheets and email. Unless users can learn macro and python, I'm not going to interact with them. People need to learn how to use a computer. Seriously.
Unfortunately, users aren't always given a choice. They have to interact with software, because it's the only realistic way to do their jobs, engage in commerce, get medical care, etc. Virtually all of this stuff happens within their browser. What are you going to do, tell people that they can't use a browser unless they've passed a leetcode interview? And how would it help? I've seen elite developers get just as fru…
Most of those operations are often trivial, and can be done with software that manipulates data instead, like excel or specialized software. They're like "interface and UI brought on a silver platter".
> They have to interact with software, because it's the only realistic way to do their jobs
The world was running fine without software. I just think you don't developers constantly making new software that get tossed away. At some point, some software stay.
In my view there is a "software bubble", there is too much software. Either 3 things:
* Either users need to use excel and make good usage of macros
* Either users need to learn how to write python scripts that handle CSVs, make things dirty where each user is responsible for his own mess, but can send his data through structured formats (csv or else).
* Either we need some new kind of software that handles generic data, that is easier to use, with languages like scratch or something else.
Developers are arseholes because they are "mighty wizards of computers", but in reality they arrogant codemonkeys who didn't discern the difference between a computer and monitor two years ago, before they took "learn PHP in 10 days and shovel the money" course.
PM are arseholes because they are measured on "innovations", not on "made 10 years old code/feature which is used by 0.5% of users is refactored and now works fine even on a $100 notebook from Walmart".
Business people are arseholes because the only thing they care is money. Sell users data for 3% revenue increase? Sure! Add obnoxious ads everywhere for 5% revenue increase? ABSOLUTELY! Hire another two developers to at least attempt to solve 1400+ known problems with the product? NO FUCKING WAY, IT COSTS MONEY!
Users are arseholes because... because they are, list is too long and others commenters would happily fill out on that part.
Everyone is hostile to everyone, but in case of web/IT products the entry bar is now lower than "You Must Be This Tall to Ride" sign in an amusement park, which allowed literally millions of people to participate in this "show".
I’m half of these examples (Reddit, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more), the user is not the customer. Products will always optimize for the customer and do the bare minimum to maintain their product. The customer is advertisers for these platforms, not users. The users are the product. The other aspect though is that devs don’t test in bad conditions. Most modern dev is done on a top of the line MacBook on a f…
You build a next generation fighter jet, but the human pilots want you to make room in the cockpit for a cupholder. You'd be hostile too.
For transit missions, you do have to consider the biological needs of the crew. Fighter jets don’t teleport between their home base and the in theater air base.
In the example of Blizzard, and WoW in particular, my (probably oversimplified and/or naive) guess is that there were two objectives that alienated existing userbase: simplifying the game to attract new (and younger) audience and to make it easier to sell in China.