[bmitc]

I am an active engineer and software developer, and I already feel like I don’t have a clue how any of it works already. I am being a little bit hyperbolic of course, but that’s the feeling.

And to be honest, I don’t think it’s me. It isn’t clear to me that the people who make all this stuff know how it works either. Nothing works as intended in technology. At least some form of technology doesn’t work as it should every day, from your work machine’s OS, or some program, or your smartphone, or Android Auto or Apple Car Play, or your TV, or your Internet provider or WiFi router, or that website you visit, or your smart thermostat, and on and on. And that’s stuff just plain not working or encountering bugs. It doesn’t even address the usability of all this.

We are just shitting out technology left and right, all at the alter of scale. In my opinion, capitalism is part of the problem. The other is human nature. There are no incentives to get this right. And these days, large companies do not care that they get it right. Statistics of failure and user frustration are explicitly part of their business models. They don’t want to even know if there’s an issue with their product. They just let some statistics drive their decision making.

It’s all just a tragedy and comedy all in one. Amazon has their 12 principles they hire with that makes it seem like they hire geniuses left and right. And they can’t even get book selling right these days. And there’s no way to report issues. They do not care.

[codalan]

It is difficult to get a person to understand something, when his/her bonus depends on not understanding it.

Most of these bonuses are probably tied with frivolous, often highly unpopular and unwanted, feature updates. I doubt people get bonuses (or as large bonuses) for fixing usability bugs or improving quality.