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Staying opinionated as you grow

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Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#11

Post by markerz »

pettertb wrote: post #7

"They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users, new needs, address every edge case." That is not what enshittification is about, and not who it is about. You don't enshittify to please users, you do it to please shareholders.

While I think I understand your point, there’s probably a few ways to look at this.

One is many products start out pleasing most users, but pivots to enterprise customers because of revenue. Thus, the product shifts heavily towards the enterprise use-case of a few customers at the loss of most small-medium users. Getting more users in this enterprise world means making changes to accommodate special needs and that leads to entropy.

Another new need is to hit next quarters revenue targets, so companies find more juice to squeeze somewhere.

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#12

Post by neom »

Moisey Uretsky who effectively came up with the idea for and made most of the foundational "cannot touch" choices at DigitalOcean basically said for a long time we were not allowed to add anything to the control panel, period. He really didn't even want us moving stuff around too much. I seem to recall, although I could be misremembering, when we hired Jesse Chase (amazing hire) who was our first everything visual guy, it was somewhat contentious, he was bought in, but man, Moisey was adamant it stayed extremely simple. We had a lot of heated debate, but I always appreciated this, I thought it was a good rule of thumb - if it ain't br0ked don't fix it basically. I've not used DigitalOcean in a very long time, fingers crossed it's still simple and easy to use! :)

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#13

Post by bitbasher »

btilly wrote: post #9

This brings to mind the Tony Hsieh quote, "You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down." All successful startups are fighting a battle against entropy. And entropy is becoming indistinguishable from all the other companies out there. Which means losing what made them succeed in the first place. This is why company culture is important. You need to know what your values are. And then you ne…

> "You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down."

That aged well...

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#14

Post by btilly »

bitbasher wrote: post #13
btilly wrote: post #9

This brings to mind the Tony Hsieh quote, "You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down." All successful startups are fighting a battle against entropy. And entropy is becoming indistinguishable from all the other companies out there. Which means losing what made them succeed in the first place. This is why company culture is important. You need to know what your values are. And then you ne…

> "You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down." That aged well...

True, the pressure on him to be some sort of guru of happiness lead to an experiment that turned out tragically.

But that doesn't invalidate the importance of the principles on which Zappos succeeded under his leadership.

It is a mistake to dismiss key insights merely because they come from someone who had human flaws. We all have human flaws, and we all make mistakes.

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#15

Post by topaz0 »

markerz wrote: post #11
pettertb wrote: post #7

"They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users, new needs, address every edge case." That is not what enshittification is about, and not who it is about. You don't enshittify to please users, you do it to please shareholders.

While I think I understand your point, there’s probably a few ways to look at this. One is many products start out pleasing most users, but pivots to enterprise customers because of revenue. Thus, the product shifts heavily towards the enterprise use-case of a few customers at the loss of most small-medium users. Getting more users in this enterprise world means making changes to accommodate special needs and that le…

Those things can happen, sure, but GP is saying that the term "enshittification" was coined to describe a very specific kind of phenomenon about monopoly internet platforms and their pattern of first building dependency and market power before becoming maximally extractive. It's not supposed to be about just any generic way that software might get worse for its users.

Arguably it was a poor choice of word, but some of us would still like to be able to refer to that specific phenomenon.

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#16

Post by topaz0 »

gwd wrote: post #8
mvkel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The irony being that "enshittification," properly deployed, can actually lead a company to even more success. Product people always think "having the best product" wins the day, but there are billions of dollars made through a perfectly baked enshittified pie.

"The Market for Lemons" has always been a thing. If the user can't immediately distinguish between "Looks good at first and is good all the way through" and "Looks good and gets crappier as you go along", then both will be forced by the market to charge the same amount; but the latter one can afford to do it at a price the former can't afford.

That's also not what "enshittification" was coined to describe.

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#17

Post by hlassiege »

mvkel wrote: post #4

It was a let down to be bought into the "hook" that saying no, taking focus, is the key to continued long term success as a scaled company, only for it to devolve into how courageous it is to have a simple homepage. I wanted to read a new story; one about an internal debate where the easy answer was to "just do it," but a hard no is what actually saved everything. Surely that story exists.

You're right. I wrote this quickly after talking with Thomas, and the homepage example reminded me of these scalability issues I faced with my previous company (Malt).

I connected it to simplicity and focus. In my head the link was clear, but I get that it's not as obvious when written :)

I'm using this blog as a kind of journal—short posts, quick thoughts. So I totally understand if it leaves you wanting more.

Honestly didn't expect this much traffic, my other posts have just been read by friends ^^

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#18

Post by jdpage »

joshbuddy wrote: post #6
jdpage wrote: post #2

Point of order: "enshittification" does not mean what the author's using it to mean. It does not just mean "the product got worse". It means "the product was purposefully made worse in order to capture additional value from the customer," i.e. a rug pull. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd hate to see such a useful term for corporate malfeasance diluted.

Well, Cory recently said in a podcast we can use it to mean "product got worse", so I've become less pedantic on this point fwiw. (I think it was in the episode of Adam Conover from about a month ago)

Hmm. I am tentatively holding to my position, because I think it's useful to have a separate word, but I'll go track down the episode and see if he elaborates on that further. Thanks!

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#19

Post by MangoToupe »

btilly wrote: post #9

This brings to mind the Tony Hsieh quote, "You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down." All successful startups are fighting a battle against entropy. And entropy is becoming indistinguishable from all the other companies out there. Which means losing what made them succeed in the first place. This is why company culture is important. You need to know what your values are. And then you ne…

> You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down.

This reads more like some corporate-aimed PR than earnest words that left the mouth of a human

Re: Staying opinionated as you grow

#20

Post by hlassiege »

pettertb wrote: post #7

"They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users, new needs, address every edge case." That is not what enshittification is about, and not who it is about. You don't enshittify to please users, you do it to please shareholders.

Fair point. I realize that "enshittification" has a more specific meaning in English (I'm french). My bad I was using it in a broader sense, connecting it to my previous company (700 people, I co-founded it in 2012).

I was thinking more about all the factors that increase product complexity, and it's far from being just about shareholders:

* The more people you add to a company, the more complexity you add because inherently, everyone wants to leave their mark. In the end, some people see themselves grow because they contributed to this or that new feature. Doesn't matter if it's redundant. Doesn't matter if 10 months later you realize it adds nothing. I've unfortunately seen this pattern repeat itself over and over.

* The bigger a company gets, the more it needs to respond to increasingly specific use cases. A salesperson tells you their client needs this. Customer support tells you a portion of your users are asking for that. Either you have enough perspective to say it doesn't fit your vision, or you don't, and you try to please everyone. But it's a huge source of complexity. And I could cite tons of examples from my old company.

And just to be transparent, I am using my blog as a journal, with short posts. I was not expecting that much traffic and I totally understand that it's maybe not as deep as you would expect ^^

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