Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gblargg 1 day ago
I just tested and apparently their site is extremely flaky. I tried for several minutes to get info but nothing except one time (changing store location, refreshing). Then it started working fine for a while, updating when I changed location. I cleared cookies out each time and that didn't cause/fix it. So it's not intentional to push you to the app, just a shit site (not just because of this issue, but its extreme slowness on mobile).
2 comments

Likely just terrible Indian outsourced development. Fetches the data via XHR, but hits a service that is flaky because of 5 years of A/B crap messing with it. Poor management, bad business stakeholders and crap developers. Welcome to the enterprise
It doesn't have to be a deliberate decision by upper management with the express purpose of pushing you towards the app. That's quite unlikely, some flunky would have anonymously published the email or memo dictating that policy were it so.

But in the same way that an individual human might do something with a subconscious purpose and plausibly claim they weren't aware that's why they were doing the thing, so too can a organized group of people do something when it suits their collective purpose. The group drifts into a behavior which is advantageous, someone in upper management is pleased with it even though the drift wasn't steered, and encourages more of the same. As that process iterates, it becomes clear why they go in that direction all without some Senior VP telling everyone at a department-wide meeting to go in that direction.