Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day • Hacker News Board

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#341

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:09 AM UTC

rosege wrote: post #183

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed with them and no, they do not pay all that well, and their recruiter was pretty upfront about disclosing that early in the process. Additionally, I've hired a candidate that had an offer in hand from Disney+ and we were easily able to outbid them, (I was at a non-FAANG company at the time)

Thanks I guess that answers my question.

Disney is notorious for paying below-market rates. There's a massive supply of naive vict--err, candidates-- sufficiently enamored with the idea of working at a well-loved cultural touchstone that they'll jump at the opportunity for almost any salary.

It usually doesn't take too long for employees to be disabused of their childhood hopes and dreams, but it's often a very painful process, and there are always some diehards who never seem to be able to let go. I lived less than a mile from the Magic Kingdom for about four years and saw this process play out many times.

Most people burn out and learn that maybe working on a boring business backend isn't that bad after all, but there's always a huge line of wide-eyed candidates eager to backfill. Companies that fit this profile never learn to treat employees well because, frankly, they don't have to. The same thing happens in games.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#342

Post by distances » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:12 AM UTC

dobleboble wrote: post #115

baddox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have much of a problem with Netflix content, but it's the price that just doesn't make sense. They charge extra for UHD, and that premium plan costs more than HBO (which is probably still the king of content quality, though with a crappy 1080p stream) and over twice as much as Disney+ and Apple TV+ (which don't charge extra for UHD).

In my opinion, HBO's content is rapidly going downhill after the AT&T acquisition. Lots of low budget, high shock value content (violence, nudity, drugs).

Violence, nudity, drugs? Like Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire?

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#343

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

dannytatom wrote: post #324

arkades wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s if you believe that Disney properly owns the material it has claimed. If you believe that the default ownership rights to culture already belong to everyone, pirating isn’t theft, it’s a refusal to be deprived of a natural right. Whether Disney makes crap or not is irrelevant.

why would you believe that, though? why do you have an innate right to someone else's work?

Because that is how culture worked for most of human history.

Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley both rose to fame by performing cover songs. This was typical up until ~1960's in America.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#344

Post by mcv » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

They also had glitches before launch day. I've had Disney+ for about a month (nice of them to use Netherland as their try-out region), and one of the first things I tried was chromecast some old Spiderman cartoons (because my youngest son is a fan). Those that had Dutch translations either failed to play, or failed when I tried to cast them. English-only ones worked fine most of the time.

And in general, support for chromecast was very flaky. It usually works the first time, but when you pause or want to play something else, it loses track of what it was casting or that it's even an option at all.

Still, it's to be expected for a new service. I assume they work hard to fix all the bugs. It's nice to have easy access to all Marvel movies and Phineas and Ferb.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#345

Post by mcv » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #338

MentallyRetired wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP on the thread and actually I'm a former disney dev for disneyworld.com. It's a sweat shop. They had me working 100 hours a week the first 4 months I was there. They would order me food so I wouldnt have to leave my desk. Many times I slept under it. Then I had 6 months of pretty normal hours working on maintenance, then I went back on another project and they had me working 60 - 80 hours (with some 40 and some 100…

> They would order me food so I wouldnt have to leave my desk. Many times I slept under it. Is this work culture the norm in the US? I audibly said "wtf" just now, sitting at my work desk.

I often see these kind of bizarre reports about destructive US work culture. I would flat out refuse and probably get fired real quick.

It's a bad way to run a company, and if this is how they plan to run Disney+, it's going to be a disaster.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#346

Post by mcv » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

Softcadbury wrote: post #154

baddox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have much of a problem with Netflix content, but it's the price that just doesn't make sense. They charge extra for UHD, and that premium plan costs more than HBO (which is probably still the king of content quality, though with a crappy 1080p stream) and over twice as much as Disney+ and Apple TV+ (which don't charge extra for UHD).

I don't understand how people can criticize the price of Netflix. Remember, just 10 years ago, the price of a single DVD ?

I find both Netflix and Disney+ a fantastic deal. I pay much more for my normal TV subscription and I barely use it.

I'm not going to pay for every streaming service, but these two have so much great content for such a reasonable price it's impossible to say no.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#347

Post by romanovcode » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

AWS, Google Cloud and Azure were all having problems yesterday in Europe. Maybe that was the reason.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#348

Post by mcv » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:38 AM UTC

jamil7 wrote: post #339

MentallyRetired wrote: post #3

I don't think anyone on hackernews would be surprised by this. The scale they have to operate at is absolutely insane. To scale flawlessly on day 1 is a big ask of any development team.

Not surprising at all, what is surprising to me is that companies still insist on doing the "Big Reveal" style launches. Why not open it up gradually in phases via a beta program or something?

They did that to some extent. I've had Disney+ for about a month now. But going from a few people in a small country to a billion people all at once is still a massive change.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#349

Post by mcv » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

ragebol wrote: post #330

MentallyRetired wrote: post #3

I don't think anyone on hackernews would be surprised by this. The scale they have to operate at is absolutely insane. To scale flawlessly on day 1 is a big ask of any development team.

I've been using Disney+ since they pre-launced in the Netherlands for the last ca. 2 months IIRC, without any issue what so ever. But then again: NL is a small country.

I've had issues getting it to Chromecast. Fortunately they released the app for Samsung TVs last week. That helps a lot. Now there's only the issue that that app was suddenly logged out for no clear reason. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#350

Post by mcv » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 9:47 AM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #196

mizzao wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main cost for Netflix is content, not engineering. They spend billions developing new shows. Disney has tons of existing material they can just monetize, so huge advantage there.

"Disney has tons of existing material they can just monetize" To be clear, Disney is pulling the content from existing monetizations -- including Netflix -- to try to monetize it on their own platforms. This isn't free real estate. There is a very real cost. And Netflix is going to put the money they aren't paying Disney to produce their own content and buy up other content. Disney is playing a very risky gambit here…

Good point. Disney is primarily a content creation company, not a technical infrastructure company. According to other subthreads in this discussion, they treat engineers as second-class employees, requiring insane work hours for little pay. If they actually want to compete with Netflix, they have to run Disney+ as a real tech company, not as something they do on the side.

Disney+ can be a fantastic success if Disney gets it right, because they do have lots of excellent content. But if they don't take the engineering side seriously, it's going to fail.

If Disney just wanted to focus on making good movies and TV shows, which clearly is what they're best at, dealing with Netflix would have been perfect for them. If they want to be a tech company instead, they really need to follow through and commit to that.