4 ms·
> From an overall social welfare pesrpective, there is something to be said for going above and beyond the customer's minimum standard. Indeed, most of the wor
by acqq 11y ago
> From an overall social welfare pesrpective, there is something to be said for going above and beyond the customer's minimum standard. Indeed, most of the work that goes on at big companies is of this type
So do you want to say that MSFT should invest less energy in speeding up the code they produce, because it won't get them more customers or more money?
- nostrademons 11y agoFrom which perspective do you want an answer? A user of Microsoft products, a developer at Microsoft, a shareholder of Microsoft, or an executive of Microsoft? As a user, of course I want Microsoft to invest more in speeding up their products. I also want them to be easier to use, and have all the features that I want, and cost less, and release more frequently. As an engineer, yes, I do want them to invest more in speeding up products. Performance tuning is fun, it's an extra skill that can go on my resume, and it helps me take pride in my work. As a shareholder, hell no are you going to indulge those prima donna engineers and their perfectionist tendencies. I invested in this company to get a return on my investment, and that means more revenue. It's clear that shaving CPU cycles isn't going to get more customers; Windows has been dog-slow compared to competitors ever since the Amiga came out, and it hasn't hurt us so far. That effort would be better invested in getting into new lines of business and building more solutions to capture the enterprise market. As an executive - it's a complicated question. I want our products to be faster, but it's also clear that our customers want them to be easier to use, and have a lot more features, and cost less, and release more frequently. All of those are in conflict with writing performant code with a fixed number of highly-trained engineers. And if I hire more engineers, the code often gets slower, as global optimization opportunities get lost in the communication gaps between workers. OTOH, performance often has intangible benefits in brand loyalty, in increased usage, in word-of-mouth, and in PR. I'd love to be able to quantify these benefits and trade them off against each other, but the point of intangibles is that they are intangible. I'm responsible to shareholders, however, and my gut feeling is that increased performance will not be the deciding factor for most customers. (As just plain old me, the question is completely academic: I am neither a user, employee, executive, or shareholder of Microsoft, so I don't really care what they do.)
- acqq 11y agoThanks. I like your context-dependent approach. And tangentially, I still wonder why MSFT thinks that forcing Windows 10 down the throat of the existing users can be considered something that will "get them more customers" if that should be the ultimate goal of the company.
- mark-r 11y agoForcing Windows 10 down your throat is a reaction to the phenomenon of Windows XP, where they just couldn't make it die. I'm sure they decided to never let that happen again. It reduces the cost of supporting old customers, while simultaneously ensuring they have a solid base for new products that depend on new infrastructure.
- acqq 11y agoThanks, that sounds plausible, that it's the result of their fear of Windows XP.