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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

danluu.com

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Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#341

Post by mdp2021 »

IshKebab wrote: post #334
mdp2021 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the deltas, the derivative. There exist long lists from personal experiences of things that worked very well and now are of comparatively terrible quality. The issue is then not just with the item, but with societies that are increasingly accepting low quality: this is a horrible trend, and one side of decadence. You get both, flanked: low quality here for the occasion and decadence around for the trend. The id…

Society has always been accepting of low quality cheap stuff. It's just that there's a ton more of it available now.

No, it's not a matter of «low-quality cheap»:

things that twenty, ten, five years ago were of high quality - same brand, update of same model - now you buy at a comparatively abysmal quality for a very similar price. It is today easy to find products which are cheap in manufacturing and expensive as a price tag.

This means that, in some way, people in some/many societies are tolerating quality degradation. And a decrease of alternatives is contributing. That, in some areas, it was once not necessary to spend time investigating which product was high or just decent quality (already the price could have been a good indicator), while now it is part of your task, shows that tolerance for low quality has increased. That is not for the 1 dollar item, but for whole range up to many figures.

And, a staggeringly increased inability to perceive degradation in general is evident today visiting some territories (and see what is tolerated now and was not before).

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#342

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

massysett wrote: post #62
Gigachad wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual its just how much money you put in to it. We spend a lot of money making sure building foundations and silicon manufacturing works because failing is expensive and dangerous. I don't want to pay double/triple price for a toaster to slightly reduce its risk of failing because I'm happy to accept that on average it lasts a long time but there is some chance it fails sooner. If I'm in charge of buying a $100M b…

There’s a lot of stuff that works remarkably well even though it’s cheap. I just came from a supermarket. It’s filled with items from around the world, of which most are very inexpensive. The consistent quality of these products is astounding—a bag of potato chips or a box of crackers tastes exactly the same, anywhere in the country where I buy it, year-round. A can of Coca-Cola tastes exactly the same even though th…

Coke and potato chips are not at all inexpensive if you include the health costs.

They're pretty good examples of things that are cheap and don't work very well, if your goal is health and not distraction/entertainment.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#343

Post by ownagefool »

Juliate wrote: post #338
ownagefool wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them. Personal experience suggests it's often a false sense of security, and you often have to have your own experts anyway. Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. T…

> Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. [...] The problem is usually tech is ran by finance. Same. Where actually, the budget is right there, it's just a matter of choice and priorities: do what's right now or invest 10x in it later because you didn't take care of it when you ought to. I've been on both sides of the argument: "budget" is a magic word for those who want to skip res…

Yes and no.

Sometimes the budget is yours sometimes you're sitting in meetings upon meetings with someone else deciding there's no immediate ROI so no budget for you.

So sure, the company is always to blame, but unless we're arguing the individual was not convincing enough, the person citing budget may not be choosing alone where to allocate it.

On the bright side, inefficient companies leave the market open for the rest of us. :)

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#344

Post by Dave3of5 »

shantnutiwari wrote: post #323
Dave3of5 wrote: post #314

Holy wall of text. I'm normally ok with these things but that site could use some CSS.

yeah. Dan Luu's site is the only one where I turn on reading mode just to make it readable( as opposed to hide distracting elements)

I use chrome and you have to enable the special flag for that and I'm not doing that for a single site.

I think it's only needs a really small amount of css i.e. some padding/margins a slight change in the background colour and some better spacing that's all probably. Five minutes worth of work and would add virtually nothing to the page weight.

I suspect whomever Dan Luu is they don't really give a f about my opinion so I'll stop now.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#346

Post by narag »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #59

Looking through old Sears catalogs and seeing the prizes on older game shows, I think some of our memory is selective. Even in photos and SD video you can see the terrible build quality on many consumer products from those earlier times. This seems to be especially true for furniture and exercise equipment. When you convert into current dollars, this low quality junk often is more expensive than what is available tod…

I remember a time when there was the good, the bad and the ugly. You knew which was each with a cursory glance.

Now there are a hundred, most of them below the cut, with top ranked = SEO junk.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#347

Post by amelius »

Because there is a power-relationship between the manufacturer and the consumer. Initially, a small amount of power is with the consumer, but at the moment of purchase the power shifts to the manufacturer. Since the power concentrates at the manufacturer, the latter will end up with massive amounts of power. This results in products that are in many ways shitty for the consumer.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#348

Post by maxerickson »

PinguTS wrote: post #313
dotancohen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I updated the post. I had no idea that oil changes are now once every two years. On the wife's Subaru I still change the oil every six months, and I remember when the standard was actually every three months. She puts about 10 km on the car during those six months, we live in a hilltop village half an hour drive from a city.

What? Oil change every three month? WTF is wrong with the US industry? The very same cars in Europe will have an oil change every 2 years or so. My Volvo S60 Model 2000 has an oil change every 3 years. There must be something that you get sold on by marketing that is so wrong. BTW. Also a Tesla has oil in their gearbox, even if it is just a single gear integrated into the single unit combined with motor and inverter.…

Without meaning to argue that it is necessary, it persists because it just isn't that big a cost. Gas isn't the largest cost of ownership and 5,000 miles of cheap US gas is still ~10x the cost of an oil change.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#349

Post by pmyteh »

ncmncm wrote: post #232
et-al wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ, many of these large household companies are shells of their former selves as they've been bought, bankrupted, and traded around. What's left is just a name with no solid product line backing it anymore. E.g. Sunbeam was a solid household appliance name, and now it's a crap. Same with Braun. The easy industrial design exercise seems to be luxurious looking materials paired with cheap electronics. Amaz…

I don't even know how I would identify a good toaster to buy, nowadays. Electric kettles are a problem, too.

Commercial toasters (and, I imagine, commercial electric kettles) are 'good' in the sense of being well-built and long-lasting. I've got a 1980s Dualit toaster which is essentially bomb-proof (the clockwork timer will eventually stop working but is easily replaced; even the elements can be readily changed out if they get damaged).

Of course, the downside is that new ones start at £150 or so. So it's difficult to make a financial case (as opposed to an aesthetic, or a principled one) over a £10 special from Tesco.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#350

Post by rob_c »

Lack of professionalism and following through with promises at scale sound like massive reasons for this. I say think of ant colonies, especially in the work from home era (I'll have some grace to beg the sensible people lets ignore covid rather than the authors ranting).

Ant colonies are hugely successful yet estimates are only about 1/3 of workers actually work. There is no 'ant-police' there is no 'don't work no food', this is just the way that it ends up.

In human situations I can count from experience being one of that 1/3 that work a lot even out of hours or when left un-monitored I know I'm in a minority because I'll throw up an experimental full stack deployment in a week with new toys/tooling/features and run into meetings to listen to someone winge about having difficulty in deploying a new ssl cert on an nginx box entirely because the instructions are only 3-4 months out of date.

This used to drive me nuts but I've come to accept humans at scale are mote like ants. This even applies to the good ones. They're normally only working 1/3 of their time, hence why project management needs to more accurately account for this rather than thinking they can encourage the average person to be the super-geek who has fun turning on the light using https-over-dns-over-shoe-string one weekend because they simply wondered if they can.

People unfortunately then take this as an insult that I'm comparing to them as ants.

My response is, if you understand this correctly you've identified you're a normal rounded human being, congrats, enjoy this and go contribute to society in the way that makes you special.

If you are insulted that I've identified you're working 1/3 of your time, either a) you're striving to be a super-nerd when you're not, please consider changing, this isn't healthy for you, or b) you are actually one of these super-worker people and get annoyed at the rest of the system like me, try moving into a career where you enjoy your work rather than trying to be the next millionaire, unless you love working in the markets, in which case, go for it and have fun :)

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