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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

Everyone here who’s worked for some moderately large corporation knows exactly why this was done: it’s a flashy pet project for some “labs” team in an otherwise boring retailer and maybe they’ll recoup some of the cost in ads, minus whatever they lose for it being an awful idea. Some charismatic product manager sold it to execs as “being the future of connected retail” or some other BS. In a few months they’ll be removed because it’s a stupid idea.

When the company that made these was analyzing their market, I have no doubt they were targeting this exact scenario knowing that even the stupidest products have a place to make a boring brick and mortar retailer think they’re doing technology.

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As a rough estimate, what percent of US economic activity is large piles of money being tossed into a flaming dumpster for the sake of someone's ego? Because every year it seems higher.

Well you can take the entire cosmetics and fashion industry for the total for one. Serving human agency includes shallow and bad ones too.

At least those are selling to actual customers. Many big corporate projects seem to be pointless pyramid building for some middle manager’s ego.

It's often someone's boss's ego, gotta get that promotion!

Look at old Victorian clothes. Or even clothes from 50 years ago. Compare them to the clothes of today. Pretty different right? That's the cosmetics and fashion industry at work. You might not like it but at least they're causing real change. Contrast that with this invention which will no doubt go the way of the dodo without anyone even remembering it.

Eh, that’s also how projects happen at all, though. The failed ones seem like it was for the sake of someone’s ego. But you need a bit of ego, in a big corporate setting.

I think TFRC was an ego project, rather than an egoless project. Yet TFRC was a wonderful project that happened to work; if it failed, it might seem like an ego project with no point.

I don’t like saying “you need ego,” but it also seems true that you can’t find large corporate projects without it. Are there good counterexamples? I’d like to change my view.

What is TFRC?

tensorflow I believe

Yes, however, tensorflow is not primarily an ad platform that forcefully replaces an alternative that no one asked for, while simultaneously silently advancing the police/corporate surveillance state at the explicit detriment of average citizens who had no say in the decision.

This is why it's important to try and negotiate for as much salary as you can, no matter what you do. Companies are lighting cash on fire all the time, they can afford it.

This. Once you see how the company spends money and how much they pay and effort they spend to hire an average skilled developer... It's empowering. Unfortunately lots of companies have just accepted high turnover rates and move forward. Imo they only do this because quantifying turnover costs is hard.

I agree, but I also meant literally whatever you do, because there are so many people who will work for 20 years never intentionally trying to increase their salary.

Well I'd say maybe 75% of the jobs I've had working for startups are because of something along those lines, so I'm not really complaining...

It's not really tossed into a flaming dumpster. Someone with less money is getting it, so that's an upside heh.

As much as I hate the idea, when you see the advertising spread on all displays [1] I think it has some great potential to increase sales.

[1]: https://twitter.com/RunDaltonRun/status/1408573096756269061

Doesn't every new innovation (produced by a corporation), good or bad, generally come from the experimental arm of said corporation (e.g, R&D division)? You have teams dedicating to maintaining the core business, and you have teams exploring areas along the fringe of your TAM.

HN's comments following Bitcoin's launch have made me acutely aware of how hostile we can be towards new ideas.

Your last point confuses me. Bitcoin has made some people richer, some people poorer, but it has not made the world a better place, nor found much use as a currency, and there’s still not a convincing case for blockchain as an important algorithmic invention.

Ironic that Bitcoin is your example here, as it definitely did not originate in the experimental arm of a corporation.

Bitcoin came from an independent researcher. That's the polar opposite of a corporate research arm.

I'd guess that most innovation comes from startups and smaller companies that get acquired, or iterative product development that aligns with a company's primary focus (iPod, Office, Ford's electric pickup) and not from dedicated experimentation organisations.

Corporations are poorly setup to benefit from innovation anyway. The funding model doesn't encourage the right incentives, and true innovation becomes political. A classic example is Kodak's early invention of the digital camera, which was a threat to the companies cash cow.

Usually bad ideas die in a test phase. This is a pure money grab completely at the expense of the consumer. The question they asked themselves was, “how inconvenient can we make the shopping experience without alienating our customers completely, in order to extract more revenue at the expense of their experience in our stores?”

Because this has zero benefit for shoppers.

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