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Users only care about 20% of your application

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Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#111

Post by bee_rider »

raincole wrote: post #50
CodesInChaos wrote: post #19

Pretty similar article to some old Spolsky blogposts: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv... https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/

It's crazy how well Joel Spolsky's works aged. Some of them ended up proving wrong (like he once predicted that making graphic cards would be a very thin margin business[0]), but most are still true today. Probably truer than when they were written. [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v In his defense, by the time 'video chips' were totally different things from today's mighty 5080.

Another note in his defense, that was before integrated graphics really (well, integrated graphics were integrated into the motherboard at the time, haha). If we include modern iGPUs they are pretty low margin devices I guess (or at least it is hard to separate out their value from the rest of the CPU package). Of course iGPUs aren’t add-on cards like he describes, but I don’t think it really weakens his overall point—the most popular GPUs in the world are so cheap nowadays they can’t even justify the premium of having their own PCB or taking up a physical PCI slot.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#113

Post by rubicon33 »

mackman wrote: post #80
tnolet wrote: post #68

Very true. But then you start selling to Enterprise and everything changes. Because one missing "hygiene feature"* can tank the the whole deal. And every Enterprise has a different one. *like a toilet. It needs to be there. You use it 3 minutes per day. If it is not there, the house is uninhabitable.

As best I can tell we've never sold the same product twice. Product roadmap is "whatever the last person I spoke to asked for." And tech debt maintaining a grab bag of 5,000 almost-but-not-quite-entirely-production-grade "must have" features that the customers rarely if ever use despite claiming that not having it was a deal breaker, is, well, debty.

Oh my god you just perfectly described the frustration of working in enterprise SaaS. It’s been fun in some ways but the constant churn of almost-but-not-entirely-production-grade software is soul crushing. We celebrate and reward speed to market and lack of process in a way that feels unhealthy and unrewarding.

I’ve worked at consumer facing companies but also other enterprise SaaS and have to say I’ve never seen it done like this before. Just ruthless pursuit of features over polish, craft, etc.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#114

Post by scarface_74 »

oblio wrote: post #87
reinvent42 wrote: post #85

> I often destroyed our home computer when I was a kid. Armed with only 2GB of storage, I'd constantly hunt for files to delete to save space. Many people have a similar experience, but it's amusing that statements like this can roughly indicate your age and the systems you were dealing with... Mine is 40 MB.

This is true for folks from the wild and woolly days of... before 2005 (I think?). But if you think about what's happening today, things have plateaued. Most people since at least 2005 probably have laptops, and generally those hover around 250GB, 500GB, 1TB of storage (with the bigger difference being top of the line/more expensive configurations, than with generational differences). More likely people now identify…

My high end Dell that I used for my job at a startup that they let me keep after the startup collapsed in 2010 was a Dell Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz with 8GB of RAM, a 1920x1280 display (one the last with that beautiful ratio), a 500GB hard drive, Gig E internet, 892.11n and FireWire.

I put Windows 10 on it when it was released and used it for a Plex Server until around 2021. It wasn’t until last year that base MacBook Airs came with more than 8GB RAM and they still come with less storage than that. Not to mention that low end PC laptops still come at a lower resolution than my old Dell did.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#116

Post by rubicon33 »

polishdude20 wrote: post #90
xnorswap wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best decision I ever made was moving from a company that acted on the whims of whomever the sales team spoke to last, to a company that had a strong product vision and was happy to say no to their customers on occasion. It's a lot less exhausting when you're not changing priorities every quarter. You also avoid the soul crushing experience of working really hard, crunching to get a feature out, only to realise yo…

I worked at a place that did it a third way: The CEO had a product vision that changed every month.

Ultimately the vision for the company and the product have to come from SOMEWHERE.

Small companies often have the CEO in a product position in my experience.

Still isn’t ideal though and more to your point, how they actually do the product role is really what matters. I.e. chasing shiny objects.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#117

Post by didip »

tnolet wrote: post #68

Very true. But then you start selling to Enterprise and everything changes. Because one missing "hygiene feature"* can tank the the whole deal. And every Enterprise has a different one. *like a toilet. It needs to be there. You use it 3 minutes per day. If it is not there, the house is uninhabitable.

At least a toilet is fairly standard these days. Not so much with digital only products.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#118

Post by hedora »

timr wrote: post #104
xnorswap wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't an exhaustive list, it was to articulate the difference between structural features, which all of those are, and product features, which are specific to your product.

Yeah, I don't really mean it as a criticism -- my list is stuff that I think is incredibly painful to build, ends up taking >80% of dev time, is messy/spidery, and which I've spent a lot of my life explaining the necessity of to (typically junior) engineers. In short, this is the kind of stuff that I think fits the parent comment's categorization: it drives enterprise sales, engineers hate building it, and it never r…

On top of that, you have to get messaging right. Here’s an example from consumer:

I’m looking for a TV. I buy after careful research, so there’s a 90+% chance I’ll end up with the TV I have in mind before walking into the store.

One device we frequently use (Linux) doesn’t send the “switch to me” hdmi signal when we start using it, so the “switch input” button on the remote is crucial.

The front runner has a One Button (TM) remote. “What fresh hell hast thou wrought?”, I ask.

On page 1, the manual says to change inputs you need to press the gear button, navigate through the settings menu to “inputs”, and then find the right input from there.

Ok, so do I get the crappier panel to avoid the settings menu every time I turn on the TV, or not?

Thankfully, page 10 has a picture of the remote, and it has a quick change input button, so that’s OK.

On top of that, I want the TV to be a dumb TV.

There’s no mention of this in the quickstart guide, but it has “Basic Mode” that which is that, except that calling something “Basic” is right up there with most four letter insults with kids these days.

As a bonus, after reading the manual, I also honestly can’t tell if it’s possible to have four hdmi inputs and also variable volume audio out at the same time.

If you’re going to produce differentiating features (or your competitors are differentiating you via enshuttification) you need to make that clear pre-purchase.

In enterprise it’s at least 10x harder to get this stuff right because you probably don’t use the product on a regular basis, and also, there are many more features.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#119

Post by didip »

davedx wrote: post #54

> Kagi didn't need to beat Google for everyone; they just needed to serve that specific slice of users perfectly. They focused on being the ideal 20% for people whose 20% Google was ignoring. Yes, this is actually a critical insight into how to find product-market fit

When it comes to Kagi, it just needs to be the old Google. Something that new Google abandoned.

Re: Users only care about 20% of your application

#120

Post by zwnow »

nradov wrote: post #105
zwnow wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe dont employ these people in positions that require a specific way of thinking then...

You're really missing the point. Most clerical jobs don't require that specific way of thinking. Major changes to office productivity applications are quite rare and it would be silly to hire for those jobs based on abstract cognitive abilities. Ability to reliably follow instructions is usually sufficient.

Until... you change the software.
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