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Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

The product manager behind this cares about having numbers to show their manager and isn't concerned about the potential reputational impact it might have on the company as a whole. Their manager likewise will be happy to report in turn to their manager that they've increased revenue by a large amount. It's peanuts to the company but could be a large increase for that particular product which is what the managers get rewarded on.

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> The product manager behind this cares about having numbers to show their manager and isn't concerned about the potential reputational impact it might have on the company as a whole.

Speaking as an ex-PM at MS, just about every individual contributor PM I've met at MS cares far more about reputational impact than making some little metric go up (even if it's a revenue metric).

I get that it's easy to use the PM discipline as a whipping boy because it's a PM's face that is associated with product changes, but I've rarely seen one at MS actively push for this kind of stuff. In the overwhelming case, they argue with their management structure for a while and get dragged kicking and screaming into a decision that they think is dumb, but they're told to own it anyways.

Typically the decisions of the boneheaded variety are made much higher up the org chart by higher-level middle management in the company who don't use the products they own and are (often) pretty thoroughly unaware of what their users actually care about. These decisions suck really bad too, because they overshadow countless other great decisions made by truly excellent people in similar positions.

Of course, it's entirely possible that everyone involved in something like this thinks it's awesome right up until it gets announced/released. I've just never actually seen that before.

As somebody who has been using Microsoft stuff for years and paid through the nose for it, can you take a guess on why Microsoft is going this shitty path since Windows 8 came out?

I have issues with a LOT of stuff, but ads on the login screen, telemetry that can't be opted out of, privacy invasion, Cortana that is literally malware and the list can go on for days - which people did push for this? The janitors?

Excuse me, but your explanation is just a personal anecdote. Management approved on all this crap and bloatware, you can't realistically cop out that "ohnoes all the PMs at Microsoft I've ever known are more interested in the company's image etc and haven't been actively pushing for this stuff".

I mean, we SEE IT. How tf did all this stuff end up in the OS? Somebody stumbled and landed face first on a keyboard and this crap wrote itself?

Edit: how can upper management ask for this stuff from their underlings if they have no clue about what is happening or what the users want? I also apologise for the harsh tone, but I am so done with Microsoft products I can't help being upset.

As an ex-PM, the idea that PMs are the ones making all the decisions absolutely does not resonate. Fundamentally, of course management in general (not specifically product management) is approving these things and carries the responsibility, but in my experience (not at Microsoft) the involvement of another firm is a clue this originated with a bizdev conversation. That sounds more likely to me than a PM saying "I really want to offer loans through Edge, let me see if I can find a partner to help execute this."

Current MSFT employee... I can say that PMs often wield a lot of power over decision making than most people in the org, esp the customer-facing decisions. And while it may not have been the PM in the lowest-rung of the chain, the parent comment perfectly applies to program managers in general, often in the middle management or higher up, both of which are often disconnected with real world, in spite of their claims to otherwise. PMs at Microsoft have enormous veto power, they cite data (or lack thereof! ;-)), direct customer interaction, conducted user studies, etc. which the dev team is usually lacking in. Of course this is only an anecdotal observation over the last 2 decades or so. Increase in $$$s in revenues is one of the best ways to get promoted, recognized and rewarded at Msft (and not only at MSFT, I suspect that's the case at most publicly traded companies, who only care to drive up the the bottom-line, no matter the means to achieve it, as long as it is (mostly) legal).

> Typically the decisions of the boneheaded variety are made much higher up the org chart by higher-level middle management

And what's that person role? Someone I feel its not a VP of quality insurance who made that decision.

This sounds like typical "roadmap via bizdev" to me. Bizdev strikes a partnership (in this case, with the firm making the loans), and then it gets handed to the poor PM to push it through.

There's something deeply wrong with the incentive structure in many IT companies.

I remember standing in an elevator with my manager on the way to sign a contract for a new bit of software. It would cost us 100k per year for this software. I asked my manager, “don’t we already have this product in-house, at least most of these features?” Their answer: “who cares? It’s not my money.”

I think there’s not so much an incentive problem, but more of a “hiring the wrong people” problem. People that literally don’t give a crap about anything but their next bonus or raise.

It has been established that most people are motivated by their personal short term gains, they have no real reason to care unless there's a positive incentive for them to worry about the long term consequences of their actions.

Chances are that those managers will be able to deliver their features on time, meeting all KPIs & OKRs, while accumulating a stack of technical debt for future maintainers.

> .. meeting kpis … while accumulating .. technical debt

Isn’t that life in a nutshell?

I wonder how Apple keeps its sh$t together. I know they have made some mistakes in recent years that hurt Apple's reputation, but overall it's been successful at maintaining a positive brand image and consistent product attributes. Sometimes this has been through backing down on wrong decisions they made before (e.g., look at the new Macbooks and all their ports.)

I think last time Apple "pulled a Microsoft" was when Ive removed a bunch of really really useful stuff in MacBooks (e.g., the ports-gate). I can imagine some forces inside Apple went like "that's it, enough." I'm genuinely curious how management in Apple works and how it promotes ideas that are truly worth it.

In a lot of places the “product design” is just the agglomeration of AB tests conceived by a large and widely distributed army of junior PMs. There is no one person responsible for the end to end experience, no top down vision, no one who’s ever going to say no on design or conceptual integrity grounds. At most an idea can get killed for having weak or negative experiment results.

I’ve never worked at Apple, but my understanding is that they have/had gatekeepers, from Jobs himself on down, to tell you your idea isn’t part of the vision and we’re not going to do it. And a lot of workers hate that!

Does it? There's now ads in iPhone settings, modal dialogs everywhere to upsell you onto Apple Music and whatever other features.

https://stevestreza.com/2020/02/17/ios-adware/

Also constant emails tellig you’re out of storage space trying to upsell iCloud storage space. Which, fair enough, is cheap but the emails are a bit spammish.

On the other hand, is not as if every single other company doesn’t do it, which doesn’t excuse but does explain it.

They’ll get there in a few years. If you fire up some of their apps, like News, that have a premium Apple subscription component they try to gently upsell you. Expect that to become more aggressive as they taste more of that sweet sweet high margin service revenue.

From my outside perspective, it seems like they must have an incentive structure that allows departments/products to forgo individual revenue if they're seen to be contributing to the wider company.

And yet, they put ads in the iPhone settings app.

It feels like they're really desperate to make their services ecosystem a thing, despite no one ever asking for it. But then services are the one area where it's possible to make shitloads of money out of thin air via recurring payments in a way that doesn't offend the users ("I'm using disk space on their servers and it needs to be paid for"). Locking people into these kinds of walled-garden services must also help somewhat with hardware sales.

Regarding the ports on macbooks, IMO it's just that Ive left and so everyone was allowed to design practical devices again, instead of admirable but impractical art pieces.

Where?

https://i.postimg.cc/YM9xW5B4/40qz3647fuq71.webp

Eh.. It's not that bad really. It's their own service and it's pretty unobtrusive. I'm not saying I like it at all, but it's a lot better than microsoft's ad notifications on windows. The windows notification immediately triggers a stress reflex in me now.

I've seen other crap notifications on my iPhone from other Apple products in the same location.

It's a major turn off.

I cannot find any evidence of this. The only article I found even related to this was showing a feature where if you had the Siri suggestions widget then you might see an App Clip for a store nearby. It works like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62559071/how-to-add-appc...

The only other advertising system within iOS that I’m aware of is the App Store, both in recommendations and search, and of course, that Apple will advertise their own services for iCloud, Storage and so on.

Is Apple an advertising-based company? Not really. Are they marketing-driven? Absolutely. I think the difference is about user value and user impact.

Apple tends to go the Amazon route of trying to capture value from the interactions users might already do, though their iAds network from a decade ago did show an unsuccessful attempt to capture the in-app ad market.

But I can’t think of the last time I would have seen an “ad” in settings, though since App Clips appear in settings for up to 10 days once installed, I can see why some might think so.

Theres nagging to setup Apple Pay (which apple gets a cut of), and now they also push trials of Apple Music and Apple Arcade - https://postimg.cc/YM9xW5B4/

They bug you to set up wallet, there's no way to opt out.

I think all the bugging can be skipped if you tap on it and initiate the setup flow then exit out of it or cancel it.

I’m not sure whether that applies to the wallet but it definitely works for Siri.

You were mostly right. I went as far as seeing a "Set up later in Wallet" button and tapped it. Now it's no longer showing an obnoxious red badge in settings. Thanks.

Click on setup and then exit and it’ll never ask again. Never had an issue with that

Apple has one profit and loss statement, that’s how.

It is a lot easier to keep your product integrity when your margins are fat because you serve only the upper crust of the markets you're in.

Also they only care about the numbers for the next 2 years before they jump to another job, not the long term future of the company.

Yeah, but somebody in that chain up the line still cares about the reputation and has to weigh that against more local goals.

Reminds me of that Better Call Saul episode where Jimmy makes a lavish TV ad to find members for a class action lawsuit, and finds a ton more people, but does it without getting the law firm's partners' approval, and they are angry with him because they care more about the law firm's reputation than the ROI for a particular case.

Edit: With that said, I'm not convinced this is the kind of the king that would actually hurt MS's reputation outside of geek circles.

> Edit: With that said, I'm not convinced this is the kind of the king that would actually hurt MS's reputation outside of geek circles. I kind of disagree with this, if enough geeks denounce it, this spreads like a wild fire. Geeks have the (un)fortunate role of recommending everything from a router to PC to TV to their friends and family and if disgruntled enough, they might steer them away from things they dislike, it is just human nature (and justifiably so too). If one non-techie thing I have learned at Microsoft very early on, is it the fact that never underestimate the _minority_ geek population who can have a disproportionately large impact on general populous with their opinions!

People use office because they need a feature or compatibility. Nobody chooses software based on reputation.

I've been involved in a bunch of large Enterprise purchases and reputation definitely was a consideration. We typically interview other customers to find out their pros/cons and in one case travelled onsite to another customer to not only talk to them but go over their installation in person. (These were all done without a vendor representative present, and I can think of a few cases where it made the difference in deciding not to go with a vendor)

>> Nobody chooses software based on reputation.

That's why Google has been so successful with Stadia.

Stadia isn’t even a good idea in the first place. Even if it is the best implementation of the idea, I still have no idea how it could ever make much sense. Other players in the space, like GeForce Now, don’t exactly look appealing either.

What makes you say that? I find Stadia works really great for me as a gaming platform. I don't have any issues with lag and I like not having to have a noisy console in my living room. The only issue with it is the limited library, but that's not inherent to the basic idea.

I think the value proposition is definitely there for a "rent a gaming pc" service. Cost/library/performance are thorny problems to solve, but if I were able to ditch my Windows PC[0] for a robust solution, I could consider it. Seemingly the only way I would possibly be able to utilize a current generation Nvidia equivalent card.

[0] I use Linux, but no, Proton is not fully there. Plenty of games either do not work or have enough glitches that make it unacceptable.

You would need a very large number of colocation setups to get latency low enough.

But looking on global picture and far in future with satellite internet - that is easily solvable, but technical issues on running those games in Stadia are least things that people are concerned about.

My personal preferences is owning a game library, because not always I play games, that require co-op or connection, but if the future is that you are opening browser and playing game from vast library of games on TV, for wich you pay subscription fee, then Stadia is on the right track. Actually, Stadia would be only one of many services and most probably that would be combined with Microsoft gaming. Looking in retrospect, most of the things are logical from what Microsoft was doing, but the question to me is always about if this is something I want as well. Looking on how automatic updates behaves on my Windows 10, it seems that 2022 is the year, I am abandoning Windows. And Stadia here is least thing I am worried about, because I don't.

> satellite internet - that is easily solvable

Starlink's latency is probably barely OK for multiplayer games, but not for remote rendering.

I know it's a niche market, but Stadia is really convenient when traveling. All you need to pack is a controller.

assuming you only travel to places with good internet and a nearby stadia server

Idk, I had a good time with shadow.tech? Mostly because I use Linux and wanted to play a game that doesn't port to Windows well (Roblox, due to anticheat not getting along with Wine).

GeForce Now and Stadia didn't have the games I wanted to play so I wasn't able to use them.

Bad example because none of the "cloud gaming" companies have been very successful

Stadia is a service. Actually very few people have the luxury of being able to choose their software. When compatibility, previous knowledge or an specific feature is key, people simply can't choose.

Stadia has no backwards compatibility, established user base, or ecosystem lock-in. Gmail and Android do, so despite having many of the same issues as Stadia, they’re incredibly popular

Stadia has been great for me. I just love it.

The commercial value of software is _nothing but reputation_. Would you buy software tools from a company about to go bankrupt? You pay for software with the idea that what you're not trusting your data and operations to a technological dead end. The problem here being that nobody is paying for software anymore in an ad-revenue model, meaning that companies have much less to lose doing that kind of shit.

Nobody chooses software based on reputation.

I guess you didn't live through the "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" era, which later became the "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft" era that seems to be ending.

It is now the "nobody got fired for buying a Gartner report" era.

Corporate clients definitely pick based on reputation. Why do you think Teams is bigger than Slack

I'd argue that Teams is bigger than Slack because Microsoft pulled a fast one, exploited their monopoly, and included it "for free" with the rest of their licenses, rather than getting people to sign up de novo. The fact that it's worse in every meaningful way than the competition, yet far wider used, highlights the whole problem quite neatly.

We have to use teams because teams is free. Despite it being terrible. There was also a push for us to switch from Miro to Microsoft whiteboard. Until a senior manager actually had to use whiteboard and they realised it was terrible.

Don’t they “choose” Teams because it integrates with outlook/sharepoint/etc? That seems to be the case at my job. Basically, Teams replaced Skype.

Because of Office license lock-in, not reputation.

Part of it is rational, because they see lots of chaos/noise in the market while having to make too many decisions. Following the "best practices" only saves them decision-making time. Might not be the "best" in practice, but at least they don't have to examine a gazillion options that are available.

Teams is bigger than slack? Like, the executable?

Teams is an abomination; something to be cast into the fires of Mount Doom. Slack is miles better for everyday communication.

I agree its absolutely awful but Teams is far bigger than Slack, I'm not sure why you'd argue that.

My sample size of three large companies, two use Slack. Boom.

(I did move the goalposts from "deployment size" to "quality").

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