[ams92]

Each engineer gets paid something around 200k-500k all in depending on seniority. I doubt just 1 team worked on this product given the bureaucracy of big tech companies like google. So why shell out millions of dollars in salary per year when the product isn’t making money?

[BowBun]

We're talking about maintenance though, not a fresh build out

[throwawaymaths]

Even worse. What engineer goes to Google and wants to be stuck on a maintenance project? No advancement potential. At best usable to claim you were a googler.

[renegade-otter]

Most of us do much less glorious maintenance for much less money and fewer perks. They drill Leetcode for months because it pays.

[infamouscow]

Google isn't a charity. The product doesn't make any money, so all maintenance is an irrecoverable expense.

[joshfee]

Google is basically split into "build things that make users happy" teams and "build things that make Google money" teams, so I think that on an individual product level you may be correct, but in aggregate at the high level Google believes there is a ton of value in revenue-less products.

Now for Podcasts (or any given product) there's always going to be some calculus of "is it enough value to justify the cost", and clearly Google believes the answer here is no.

[naasking]

What's the business cost of leaving a sour taste in people's mouths over and over again?

[joshfee]

Really depends on "how many people". Also if its roughly the same group of people they're making angry over and over, and they don't see an impact to the bottom line, then I'd say the answer is "pretty small", at least relative to Google's size (at which its all about volume)

[infamouscow]

Google answered this. The cost is higher than leaving a sour taste in people's mouths.

[naasking]

Maybe, or maybe they haven't even considered it and the cumulative effect it will have.

[beezle]

Maybe part of the problem is paying people 200-500K for this kind of job? Is it written in stone at all products require that kind of "skill" to function?

[candiodari]

The problem is not that. The problem is that managers will insist that businesses are in danger if they face any competition.

Of course, the only thing that's really in danger is the careers (and egos) of those managers. Internal competition would be an extremely good source of information on the performance of the business those managers manage.

So anything remotely competitive gets eliminated.