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by MattGaiser 2234 days ago
> As a user and developer myself, that's the sort of selfish attitude that really really angers your users.

A user is only unhappy if they withhold some money over it.

5 comments

As others said, user != customer. A big chunk of software (perhaps the majority) is bought by someone other than the end-user. Think workplace, or all the OEM garbage that ships with your phone.

On top of that, on the mass market, customers don't have a meanigful choice. They can't signal desires in the entirety of concept space; they choose out of what's available on the market. Which means the choice really lies with the vendors.

A user is only unhappy if they withhold some money over it.

Yes and no. If you are selling to the CFO on the golf course, then you get paid and all the actual users are unhappy. This is the entire ERP industry.

And they do, even if it's not a conscious decision. Most large scale experiments see bounce rate increase and revenue decrease with page load time. More load time because "it's easier to develop this way and it saves developer time, which is expensive" means more bounces and less sales.

Of course, that only matters at scale. If your site never takes off, optimizing for user experience (instead of developer experience) wouldn't have paid off. On the other hand, maybe putting your users second lowers the chance of it being well received.

Right. If your product is paid for in eyeballs, then by the time users have perceived your low quality, they've already paid.
This (and related phenomenon with subscriptions) is arguably a big drive for the software becoming increasingly infantilized; shiny toys instead of useful tools.
What an absolutely sociopathic attitude