I always wondered, how does it feel to be the programmer who wrote that code? "It's my job, I don't care." "My boss made me do it." "We are simply educating the customer on making a better choice." "Well, we all have bills to pay."
We programmer tried to tell ourselves that we are just doing our job. Sometimes, only way to feel better about ourselves was to believe in bullshit that customers are are rich spoiled housewives with nothing to do. 90% of our end users were females.
I stayed a bit too long, but now I work for a major tech company and it seems we are still using dark patterns except society has accepted these dark patterns as price for free access.
I think it's just another work perk though, to be able to work on something less unethical. And like other work benefits, it attracts better people.
- I buy into the idea that distribution/retention can often make or break a product.
- I personally find almost all sales and retention techniques annoying.
- Since it works, and I’ll have to implement some form of it, I don’t see much difference in which specific form it is, unless it’s really obviously scammy. What’s the difference in annoying people when they unsubscribe vs annoying people with Facebook ads? As long as they ultimately have a choice whether we get their money or not, it’s the same to me.
Adding a few extra steps to your Amazon Prime cancellation isn't great, but it's not exactly worth throwing shade on fellow programmers somewhere who were tasked with implementing the designs as decided by the employer who provides their paycheck.
A: What did you do this week?
B: I operated an appendix to save someone's life.
C: I sold a home to a young family.
D: I added yet another layer of frustration to users trying to cancel their membership.
You probably have to tweak your language to match marketing speak.
So, you did:
"implemented a rich UI specifically aimed at the difficult group of unsatisfied customers, to convince them of keeping their membership"