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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

Has that been the result? I've heard fans complain about the quality of software decreasing. So they're shipping buggy products slowly?

I'm tired of companies in general putting out junk. The complete lack of embarrassment or care about putting out (and charging for) broken stuff frustrates me to no end. What I especially hate is instead of companies recognizing that and fixing it because they actually want to be better, they make excuses.

Is product quality not a priority anymore?

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I think such quality collapse is evident across many industries today. It might be related to wage stagnation. Can't afford to buy quality, and no incentive to produce it.

Please. They released an iOS update and the calculator wasn't working. How many expensive 10x PhDs do you need to release a working calculator app?

You don't need any 10x PhDs. You need some competent, well paid QA devs to go over the product and make sure the obvious stuff is working before you ship.

I've heard of a bunch of companies cutting QA staff in the past year or so. Upper management sees them as an obstacle to shipping and middle management sees them as the "source of all the bugs" and an entire office not "producing" anything so they're clearly not useful.

It doesn't help that there are a to of automated test zealots telling management that if you put your effort into automated tests you won't need manual testing. If you listen carefully the experts are really saying that is the ideal, not that it will ever be the reality.

I think the issue is that in software you can only get promoted by writing whizbang new features. Until the time companies figure out an incentive system that properly rewards responsible stewardship of an existing product we will be stuck in the current quagmire.

That won't happen until consumers figure out they care and put their money where their mouth is. When people buy the latest and then complain companies learn that the complaints are meaningless. When people start buying "brand-quality" devices only after they have been in the market for a while companies will learn that building a quality product pays because it has a longer life.

Airplanes and medical software is much more reliable (though both have major problems)

Apple has no need to increase their quality: their customers are loyal at the current levels. Their customers will say it is because the competition is worse overall (the truth of this statement is different debate).

Look at Microsoft for an example of how you can ignore quality for a long while before it catches up to you. (To their credit Microsoft did a stellar job of climbing out of that hole).

> I think such quality collapse is evident across many industries today.

Could it be related to MBA thinking? Seems like today's corporate leadership shamelessly focuses on nothing but short term financial numbers.

The market, afaict, no longer properly associates a game with its publisher/developers in the general case. In which case, companies don't have to try very hard to get out of problem release: few even know who they are.

Meanwhile with Linux, you can have many people writing and testing bugfixes. Open source OSes don't have this problem where you have to wait for one company.

They don't have "this" problem -- but they certainly have problems. Kind of ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

Ok and? How does what you said contradict what I said? I didn't say there were no problems.

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