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Comment by kirykl | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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).

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.

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