I think a big part of the problem is bad design, churn, and lack of technical skill in product managers.
Quality is a hard sell in big tech
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Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#12There's not much bigger tech than Boeing, yet I doubt they will be left operating if their plane quality gets too shoddy...
Related reading : https://www.construction-physics.com/p/a-cycle-of-misery-the...
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#13Great article, on a side note I wish we had a better word than ‘enshittification’. This ‘word’ has no etymological roots and cannot be taught to kids/teenagers or placed in the dictionary/thesaurus (most likely placed under the vulgar section if it has one) or cannot be said on tv or radio (some stations and channels have a policy that prohibits strong language being said over the airwaves) There has to be a better w…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification > Doctorow has used the term platform decay to describe the same concept.
So then this proves that this ‘word’ doesn’t need to exist.
So then it’s baffling (other than it’s vulgarity) that this ‘word’ has become popular.
Only tech / writer / journalism circles has this sort of thing happens, I do hope that this word gets replaced.
Reintroducing platform decay or something similar would be a start to get this into books rather than that ‘marketing vulgar buzzword’
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#14Great article, on a side note I wish we had a better word than ‘enshittification’. This ‘word’ has no etymological roots and cannot be taught to kids/teenagers or placed in the dictionary/thesaurus (most likely placed under the vulgar section if it has one) or cannot be said on tv or radio (some stations and channels have a policy that prohibits strong language being said over the airwaves) There has to be a better w…
I call it "management decay." It also happens to all of my favorite food joints around town, because they're always being bought out.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#15I think a big part of the problem is bad design, churn, and lack of technical skill in product managers.
So why am I getting passed up for product manager positions? Is this problem not recognized in industry or is there more to the story?
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#16Quality code is simple code, simple code does not provide job security nor does it pad CVs, its not only a top down conspiracy but a bottom up one as well
There's more to quality code is simple code. Some things or situations are inherently complex to handle and you may still want software for them (especially because they are complex). Simple code won't usually handle complex stuff, and you may still need quality. Now you should reach for simplicity. Which may itself be complex to define.
I agree, and to add on to that sometimes there's irreducible complexity to a problem, requiring complex code.
But never complicated code: crufty fixes upon fixes, too many layers of indirection, templates templating templates; you won't need that to solve complex problems.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#17I wondered about this a lot, while using certain software at work, and noticing that there are certain kinds of low quality that annoy me in different ways, and the one I focused on is the maddening kind of software crap where you know it could be good if they just looked at it and got a few brave people to fix it! Why don’t they? It’s because, first principle, the kind of quality dip that drives you nuts, is the one that shows good engineers working with bad engineers. It’s a situation that sets off all our ridiculousness sensors and indignity flags. But a company that gets large enough is always going to converge on the same ratio of good to bad engineers that exists in the industry. It’s like reading a comic book with a really good artist and a really bad inker or something — you just feel the difference so preconciously. With small companies, they usually attract like, so the good engineers push the bad ones out or vice versa and we just think the product is good or bad. It’s the mix that drives us crazy.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#18Part of this is the hubris of Big Tech in shedding test teams and skilled testers in favor of devs who claim they can do it themselves. And then don’t. Because they don’t enjoy testing, and they aren’t rewarded for doing good testing.
I was shocked when I went from a small company with an incompetent QA team to big tech with...usually no QA team.
I also presumed that if I worked at a big tech company, I could file bugs for all the rough edges I encounter using their products and get them fixed. That allure wore off after frequently getting no response until the responsible team declares "bug bankruptcy" years later. The few major products that do have QA seemed to be staffed by incompetent offshore call centers. You file a bug that says something like "this div is missing padding" and it'll get routed back to you asking for you to attach logs (because some training somewhere must say all bug reports need logs). There's frequent "I told you so" ferver when a bad review comes out, echoing all the feedback some PM roundly ignored during dogfood.
I've found a good day-to-day team which has kept me around so far, but there's always the back 40% of my mind wondering if I should quit, sell all my stock, and stop using our products. It's depressing being surrounded by so many talented individuals, yet seeing the company make boneheaded product decisions and show total indifference to the quality of what it ships.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#19Great article, on a side note I wish we had a better word than ‘enshittification’. This ‘word’ has no etymological roots and cannot be taught to kids/teenagers or placed in the dictionary/thesaurus (most likely placed under the vulgar section if it has one) or cannot be said on tv or radio (some stations and channels have a policy that prohibits strong language being said over the airwaves) There has to be a better w…
Call it rent seeking then.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#20This is a good observation. Tech monopolies allow companies to hire more developers than they need and don't need to have clean code... The solution just barely has to work to meet UX, performance, security and scalability requirements. Maintenance costs aren't a factor worth considering. At least it hasn't been so far.