I see “enshittification” as describing cases where the economic incentives are to make the experience worse for users, as in the obvious example of adding more and more ads. There is another huge effect where new features are valued over quality, which is not a problem exclusive to big tech. But I think a lot of big tech’s quality problems are about scale and complexity. The software crisis still exists: big complex systems with lots of users and use cases have a tendency to get worse. Scale is hard, and almost by definition big tech has a lot of large scale systems.
Quality is a hard sell in big tech
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Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This 'word' has no etymological roots Huh? Not only does it have them, they are extremely transparent since it's such a recent coinage. https://www.etymonline.com/word/en- https://www.etymonline.com/word/-fy
It's a silly coinage to describe a concept that has little to no roots other than 'shittification' which isn't really a word (other than the laced vulgarity), so I don't accept this either, so this is rounded to 0. I do not see it as a serious 'word' to be written, taught or spoken, in fact using this 'word' gives the article less credibility as it makes the article trite and childish.
If it seems childish, then use shite and enshitefication for extra gravitas.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#73[flagged]
Corporations have been perfectly capable of incompetence for quite some time without any special emphasis on inclusivity.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#74[flagged]
Sounds more like a pet hypothesis in the brain than an elephant in the room.
Virtue signaling is as old as humans. The virtues might change, the phenomenon stays.
Nothing about companies trying to appeal their audience is new. What though could be new is that you are becoming older and thereby, statistically more conservative, thereby falling out of the approximated audiences taste profile for which virtues to optimize for..
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This 'word' has no etymological roots Huh? Not only does it have them, they are extremely transparent since it's such a recent coinage. https://www.etymonline.com/word/en- https://www.etymonline.com/word/-fy
It's a silly coinage to describe a concept that has little to no roots other than 'shittification' which isn't really a word (other than the laced vulgarity), so I don't accept this either, so this is rounded to 0. I do not see it as a serious 'word' to be written, taught or spoken, in fact using this 'word' gives the article less credibility as it makes the article trite and childish.
I'm not sure what you think "etymology" or a "root" is. The word is quite regularly formed via English derivational morphology. Start with "shit", which -- like every word that isn't a pure coinage -- has an etymology[0], going back to the (hypothesized) Proto-Indo European root "skei-" (it's cognate with "scissors"!). Then it's just combined with the well-known affixes "en-" and "-ification", each of which has a history of its own (have you ever wondered why there's a "c" there in that suffix instead of the more regular "-ifiation" that would result from directly combining "-ify" and "-ation"? There's a reason!).
Like, you appear to be using these words in a nonstandard way; I'm not sure why you expect anyone to know what you're talking about as a result. I would suggest defining your terms if you want to be clear.
I mean sure it's a pretty dumb word and hardly the one I'd use. But you're seemingly talking nonsense about etymology.
[0] Note that "etymology" is often used to mean "known etymology", so in that sense a word can have no etymology, but that's not what I mean here.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#76That's not a problém of big tech, of tech or any other field. That's a problém of our society where the main goal is to make as múch money as possible. Any talk about quality is either marketing or practically useless compliance for some arbitrary certificates.
There is no incentive to produce "quality" (for a meaningful definition of quality).
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#77Quality is expensive. Even a fairly minor improvement in basic Quality can double the cost of implementation.
But, in my opinion, it’s absolutely required for complex systems, and complex problems often need complex answers, despite the wish for simplicity (which can sometimes happen, but less frequently than people might think).
I had an online back-and-forth, the other day, with someone that didn’t seem to be able to grasp the fundamental concept (actually thousands of years old) that big things tend to be aggregates of lots of small things, so it’s a good idea to make the small things high Quality, as you go. It was interesting. One of those things that seems obvious, to me, but I guess isn’t, to a lot of folks.
It reminded me of that “Eat Less, Move More” SNL skit, where people can’t understand that eating less, and moving more, is a great way to lose weight. There must be some shiny tech, or popular book. You can’t simply take care in every little job, so the big ones work out.
I do think that the current lack of personal investment, by engineers, in their vocation, doesn’t help. When someone only stays at a company for a couple of years, or less, that’s enough time to do a half-assed job, but not enough time to be responsible for maintaining it. It incentivizes churning out a lot of shoddy work, quickly.
That’s not really the fault of the IC. The executives are the ones that establish the corporate culture, and retaining talent doesn’t seem to be high on anyone’s list, these days.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#78Quality is expensive. Even a fairly minor improvement in basic Quality can double the cost of implementation. But, in my opinion, it’s absolutely required for complex systems, and complex problems often need complex answers, despite the wish for simplicity (which can sometimes happen, but less frequently than people might think). I had an online back-and-forth, the other day, with someone that didn’t seem to be able…
Quality needs appreciation and an eye for it. It's abstract yet infinitely enhancing. I'll happily pay more for higher quality software and higher quality goods. At the end, I have my peace of mind, things work the way they should, in a predictable manner. This also means that quality is boring (and boring is good).
As you said quality is expensive, and is hard. Because needs iteration, blood, sweat and tears. And masses of engineers (of any kind) is in this for money, not for their passions. To be able to build quality $SOMETHING, you need to go slow, pour yourself in the thing you're building. You need to think like a craftsman, and be one with the thing you're building.
Companies want "MVP in 48 hours, product in 4 months, exit in 12 months". So, people glue what they can find together to build, without any regard for quality (or anything really).
This kind of environment is not conductive to quality, but only littering.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#79That's not a problém of big tech, of tech or any other field. That's a problém of our society where the main goal is to make as múch money as possible. Any talk about quality is either marketing or practically useless compliance for some arbitrary certificates. There is no incentive to produce "quality" (for a meaningful definition of quality).
And you need to be able to explain things to multiple layers of bosses/colleagues in a way that appeals to them. Your bosses care about money and promotions, your colleagues/underlings care about better work/life balance and wage increases. Some c-level might respond to a product manager talking about quality with 'so, will it, and how, affect our bottom line positively; show me the money' while a developer might say 'dude, I just work here for my pay check; the task says do X, I do X, not X+Y, where I have to invent Y, because it's not in the task'. A presentation for both groups is most likely misaligned, but even different layers of management have different incentives, all driven by money, but I see that most people cannot put the push for quality in a package that appeals to mostly anyone, besides if they can show it will make more money; there is often just simply no visible correlation, and definitely not short term or on a large (enough) scale.
I see it in the small (with small startups) with some designers; sweating (spending large amounts of time on) the small stuff that turns out to make 0 difference in money terms. Pride in your work/quality is something else than that, but you cannot explain this to your money/growth focused partners.
Re: Quality is a hard sell in big tech
#80Great 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 like it. It correctly and viscerally describes the feeling. The other suggested phrase I see in this thread is “management decay,” but I don’t like it. Decay is a natural process. Here, the “en” at the front indicates an intentional, active process. If you want something less crude, maybe we can count a phrase like “platform arson.” But I think people relate to the vulgarity.
Exactly. The word is intended to cause an emotional reaction to an intentional practice. If you pretty it up, it loses force: “waste elimination” and “fornication” are descriptive but not as evocative as the many alternatives. One should be angry about enshittification.