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Quality is a hard sell in big tech

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Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#31

Post by RangerScience »

isoprophlex wrote: post #16
jraph wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Three” seems to be a good number, that shows up a lot. Arithmetic is functions with “3” cardinality (operator, data, data).

Three levels seems good: a solid foundation of high-quality library code; working application code on top of that; dirty workarounds on top of that.

As you say, the problem comes when you stack workarounds on top of workarounds.

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#32

Post by colesantiago »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #26
colesantiago wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m glad i’m not the only one that sees this. Often I read an article and that ‘word’ pops up and the article loses credibility, because of this ‘technobabble’ which is worse with purposefully laced vulgarity. It’s always used in tech circles because it’s ‘funny’ now but we know we cannot say this in a serious discussion in public or context and expecting the other side to take what you’re saying seriously. You are r…

> I believe if more people say this ‘word’ then it gives me the green light to coin words with ‘fuck’ in them and getting the public to say it without questioning me. That already happened. Look how lightly people take references to "TFA" on this very site.

My gripe is the 'word' is gaining traction and was 'word' of the year by the ADS which is my problem, TFA is confined to tech circles whereas this is gaining on the cusp of mainstream

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshitt...

I never did take the ADS seriously though, but it would be only about time that this may reach the Oxford English Dictionary.

I guess it's time to coin a new word with a combination of 'fuck', 'shit', etc in it on a new blog and throw it and push it around and expect people to just say it on tv and radio stations.

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#33

Post by isoprophlex »

bsimpson wrote: post #18
satisfice wrote: post #10

Part 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…

Given that, it's no surprise that using any big tech product in the current year is a sad, underwhelming, mildly frustrating experience.

Everyone seems to have collectively forgotten how cool it felt to use gmail back in the day, for example. Getting an iPhone 3GS was, for me, magical.

But the incentives and economic realities are so vastly different right now, I wonder if we'll ever recapture that spirit.

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#35

Post by lmeyerov »

block_dagger wrote: post #11

I think a big part of the problem is bad design, churn, and lack of technical skill in product managers.

The article's stance is those are effects, not causes:

As a product succeeds and establishes lockin, management may decide that devoting resources to improving the product's design has less relative ROI than devoting those resources to targeting new users who are not locked in. Those new users may be in an adjacent market that needs new features, which is typical when a product started in an intentionally narrow niche. New features crowd out the designs for old market users -- it's hard to stuff 10lb of shit in a 5lb bag -- and as the senior PMs & designers move to the new growth areas, more junior ones sub in to the old ones, and struggle even more.

It takes a LOT of design & product discipline & effort to avoid this. I think that's generally a disaster for consumer products, but in enterprise, which often pays for everyone else, the issue is much less clear, and especially on time scales that matter to individual employees. I'm always impressed when companies escape these kind of disincentive structures!

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#36

Post by Mistletoe »

colesantiago wrote: post #13
BlueTemplar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’

But the word perfectly describes the experience. It is a vulgar experience.

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#37

Post by Mistletoe »

krapp wrote: post #9
colesantiago wrote: post #3

Great 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…

Sorry... I tried to fight that battle when it first became popular and just got snarked on and voted down. Like it or not, the tech community has decided that Cory Doctorow's poop joke is a precise term of art to be taken seriously in technical discussion. People will even gatekeep it, if you use it in the wrong context. It's a very important and necessary word, apparently.

Is this about your username?

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#38

Post by threatripper »

hyperhello wrote: post #17

I 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…

I don't think it is this. Good engineers could solve those problems if they had the time to. I think it's more about the people who make decisions not caring enough about the product quality. And also that most quality issues do not show up in metrics. So solving those issues just isn't a priority at all and if it becomes a low priority then low priority workers get assigned to it. Good people learn to follow the money and they learn to follow metrics that prove their success. Problems without metrics are not real. Stop bringing them up in discussions.

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#39

Post by kortilla »

krapp wrote: post #9
colesantiago wrote: post #3

Great 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…

Sorry... I tried to fight that battle when it first became popular and just got snarked on and voted down. Like it or not, the tech community has decided that Cory Doctorow's poop joke is a precise term of art to be taken seriously in technical discussion. People will even gatekeep it, if you use it in the wrong context. It's a very important and necessary word, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth

Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech

#40

Post by Affric »

colesantiago wrote: post #3

Great 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…

The truly profane thing is the practice.
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