[wolrah]

I blame marketing departments being given too much (read: almost any) control over product development.

No developer cares about the level of analytics being pushed today, and unless they're profit sharing they probably don't care about the ads either.

Those anti-features are there because marketing departments want them there and have enough power to get what they want.

Don't let marketing make product decisions.

[horsawlarway]

Back up even farther, though - SO MANY PRODUCTS are literally indistinguishable outside of marketing.

I think the issue is much deeper than "don't let marketing make product decisions".

Browse through any app store - click a category, and it's a sea of apps that provide essentially the same capabilities.

Just like your grocery store has a sea of jars filled with slightly varying salsa.

So take the diagram in the article:

Customers asked for it: Check.

Customers would benefit from it: Check.

We built/tested/shipped it: Check.

What's the missing step? Did ANYONE fucking buy it?!?!

And it turns out none of the other steps actually matter compared to the last one, if the goal is to remain a functioning company.

[TeMPOraL]

> Customers asked for it: Check.

> Customers would benefit from it: Check.

The key is in what the word "it" means. The answers are positive if by "it" you mean "this category of product". They may very well be negative if by "it" you mean "our particular product".

The customers want a jar of salsa. They don't want, and never asked for, your particular variation of a jar of salsa, essentially identical to 10 other variations except for a differently designed label.

Another tricky bit is in the "asked for" part. For most products on the planet, customers don't really ask for anything. The market isn't structured this way. Products are just dumped on the market, and those that sell survive. This is wasteful, but has some benefits. It would just be better if marketing wasn't there to meddle with things, artificially sustaining more variations of a product than needed.

[BugWatch]

I'm gonna use one of those examples that irks me personally. Do we really need 19 different formulations of fabric softener available in another 15 different scents from 12 different manufacturers?

I'd say it's a solved problem. Make - dunno - 3 different formulations (normal, sensitive, extra soft?), and provide the scents as small and separate ampules, and let the user mix and match the apple and cinnamon, and make the place smell of a bloody apple pie after a load of laundry for all you care. People are usually already familiar with those, and have their preferences, plus it would even be fun to experiment, and make one's own blends.

Anyway.... What I wanted to say is that I hate having too much choice (especially artifical one), and I specifically hate choice paralysis.

And I'm writing this as an European. Finding myself in search of a cereal, and ending up in a typical USican giant isle consisting just of a cereals is my idea of an nightmare. I thank the FSM for Lidl existence.

[jeegsy]

Customers didnt ask for an iPad but they sure bought the hell out of it

[TeMPOraL]

They asked for PADD from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and iPad was the closest the market could give them.

[Frost1x]

The underlying cause here is unbound and often unregulated profit motive with the farse that competition self regulates. At some scales competition self regulates but at scale we see now, it simply doesn't. There are too many barriers and too strong of foothold in markets.

As a result it trickles down, how can we improve our revenue stream. More data, more ads, more nickel and diming consumers, how can we lockdown control of this product/service, charge more for the same and even more for less.

Developers are, in my opinion, just along for the ride and not making these decisions so much as allowing and enabling them to happen. In the world of professions software engineering pays quite well and it pays well for a variety of reasons. People take lucrative positions and decide, reasonably, that what they're being told or pressured to do isn't that bad. It's not like the holocaust where they're turning a blind eye to genocide, they're turning a blind eye to corporate, monopolistic, and oligopic market abuses because at the end of they day they get to live comfortably.

I develop garbage I don't agree with often. I reduced my comp level to have more leverage to haggle against questionable practices but even then I still have to do some questionable things. For developers it's a choice of following along and being paid well or taking a hit and working somewhere that comps a hit less but doesn't product hostile products. I have nothing against those who choose to enable these business practices because they're building financial security in a world we've created that says these practices are OK. Businesses are sort of doing the same but they're more proactive in shaping the policy that allows these practices, so they have real responsibility here. Consumers have a responsibility as well by continuing to buy garbage they don't need that uses these practices. Voters have some responsibility for pushing politicians in who bend to the will of businesses to allow deregulation or prevent regulation for these practices. Politicians have blame for the ethical flexibility to let lobbyists and businesses incentivize them to represent businesses more than their voter base.

We have a mess on our hands with everyone having a little bit of blame here but the biggest responsibility I believe falls on large businesses and the capital holders behind them setting most of this in motion.

[TheOtherHobbes]

If you build your culture on an ethic of competitive individualism, this is what you get.

Hardly anyone is really happy. Not even those with huge piles of money.

They're comfortable and (largely) immune to everyday threats. But the system as a whole continues to be made of traps and sharp edges. And a lot of people fall through them, never to be seen again.

Not a few were convinced it couldn't possibly happen to them, until it did.