Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better • Hacker News Board

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#191

Post by meiraleal » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 12:42 AM UTC

latexr wrote: post #176

nicbou wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but the data does not. These annoyances serve the business's goals really well. It's good to remember that most businesses exist to make money, not to be pleasant to us HN readers.

> I agree with you, but the data does not. Do you have the data that you can share? > It's good to remember that most businesses exist to make money, not to be pleasant to us HN readers. HN does not have a monopoly on discerning users. We are not special. It would be unrealistic to think the number of people who care about this is but a subset of people who frequent one website.

  >> It's good to remember that most businesses exist to make money, not to be pleasant to us HN readers.
  > HN does not have a monopoly on discerning users

What he said (or what I understood) is the opposite:

Businesses can and will take advantage of less discerning users and they are in their right to do so because making money is their reason to exist. That's a terrible mindset that dominates the (big)tech/startup sector and the reason for the Great Enshittification. Let's see how far this can go before it collapses.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#192

Post by latexr » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 1:43 AM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #186

latexr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my post history, I asked about newsletters and newsletter popups, and a few people confirmed that they work really well. Ignoring for now that’s 100% anecdotal and that “a few people” is far from enough to make definitive claims, what post history are you referring to? Do you have a link? > The goal is to get paying customers. We discerning readers are the high effort, low reward cohort that aren't worth losing…

You're being overly pessimistic. It's not exploitation. You ask people if they want a thing and they say yes. It works predictably better than not shooting your shot. Call it anecdotal evidence if you will. The matter of fact is that it seems to work well enough for people to keep doing it.

> You ask people if they want a thing and they say yes.

You call it asking, I call it nagging. And “yes” isn’t the only answer, there’s also “you annoyed me so much I’ll actively avoid you”. Have you never seen one-star reviews saying “the app keeps nagging me to review”? These have business consequences, it’s far from all positives as your responses imply.

> The matter of fact is that it seems to work well enough for people to keep doing it.

That’s like the old maxim that “nobody gets fired for buying IBM”. Just because “everybody does it” does not mean it’s the optimal approach. Things change and people get wise to common bullshit, even as this kind of “knowledge” and “best practices” keeps being shared by money-hungry pariahs. No one really tests these assumptions in depth, they just share them uncritically. If you’re so sure it’s the best approach, let’s see the data. Otherwise let’s just be honest and say we don’t know.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#193

Post by kazinator » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 2:56 AM UTC

> If there's a big backlash from the team then you're on the right path.

People hate the proposal to remove the microwave ovens and free coffee from the kitchen, so it must be the right idea!

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#194

Post by nothackerfox » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

I can see how this can be so useful across the board. Well explained with something as tiny as a calculator.

And, yes, removing things should be rewarded. It's a cognitive bias to reward just for adding things.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#195

Post by hinkley » Tue, Aug 27, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

mquander wrote: post #22

I don't know if this calculator was good or bad, but the rationale sounds superficially ridiculous. > Visitors who didn't see the calculator were 16% more likely to sign up and 90% more likely to contact us than those who saw it. There was no increase in support tickets about pricing, which suggests users are overall less confused and happier. Of course if you hide the fact that your product might cost a lot of money…

Also clicking through is not a good thing if it doesn’t result in revenue! Why do I want to render eight pages for someone who will never give us money if I can find that out in three?

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#196

Post by pushupentry1219 » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 4:02 AM UTC

ibash wrote: post #36

Osiris wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you reach the conclusion that the company has too many employees from that one sentence?

Two lines of reasoning. First: A lot of time was spent building consensus. No individual felt they had unilateral power to remove the calculator. Instead the behavior was to seek approval. That's probably because of unclear ownership, which often happens because of too many people. Second: Too many cooks in the kitchen. At any stage of a company there's a limited amount of important work. Work that is mission critica…

The company I work for has cut staff by 60%, and workload has not decreased. This is standard corporate shittery, however my point here is that we still have the issue of unclear ownership even on basically skeleton staff. It's not a question of individual ownership, it's about what team owns it in my case.