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Absolutely the name is holding them back. In my case it prevents me from championing the product within my company. Going to the executives and saying "we're go

Absolutely the name is holding them back. In my case it prevents me from championing the product within my company. Going to the executives and saying "we're going to put our most precious data into Cockroach" simply won't fly. Any discussion of features will be for naught; I know the CEO will make a "no" decision as soon as he hears the name. To any Cockroach Labs folks who might read this: please give me (and all of us) a name that I can evangelize without my audience cringing.

corndoge 10y ago
If it's not too much trouble you might consider looking for a new job if management is that obtuse.
- emptythought 10y ago
  Except this is going to be the common response of management at basically any large, or older company. Not everyone here works at startups, and this isn't something that's easy to just immediately change. This is an issue with a lot of weird or jokey project names, honestly.
- jdcarter 10y ago
  Everybody makes decisions using both emotion and reason. This is why successful products speak to both the heart and the mind of the customer. Said another way, this is why the marketing department is just as essential to a company's success as the engineering department. I've worked with my company's executive team for quite a while, and they're not obtuse. They are human, however. When I go to them and suggest we trust our data to a new, up-and-coming database, I'm asking quite a lot. The cost of failure is extremely high, so I need to convince them at both an emotional and rational level that the risk is worth it. But when the conversation starts, "let me tell you about Cockroach..." I'm already starting from behind. The reason so many people are fussing about CockroachDB's name is because there's such a huge dissonance between a product that looks fantastic on its technical merits but has a name that triggers terrible images. Have you ever lived in a house with roaches? That's the kind of thing that wedges in your mind in the "never again" category.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    "But when the conversation starts, "let me tell you about Cockroach..." I'm already starting from behind." Attempting to explain how brand recognition works: people browse the web, they see and hear things, they remember unusual things, things they see often, things they notice better because of how they shown in all the noise, etc. After awhile when presented with the choice where they need to make a judgement either under pressure, in a hurry or simply because they don't have enough information, they favor a familiar thing, thing they can recall, rather than the thing they can hardly recall or not at all, no matter how neutral the name is. This is called a familiarity bias and is also the reason behind the phrase "no such thing as bad publicity". So, you are definitely not starting from behind.
  - dongslol 10y ago
    That people are both emotional and logical is a non sequitur. The responsibility of picking a database includes trying explicitly to discount how ones feels about petty things like the name and rush to the technical discussion. That's part of what it means to do a good job picking a database. All the best technical people I know would feel a visceral disgust at the thought of a product being discarded due to its name. Someone who was truly suited to attacking the problem of database selection would proactively make sure he wasn't letting nontechnical features into the discussion. Whoever creates the successor to Linux should name it Holocaust OS or something just to mess with people, and laugh at those who due to its name thereby do their computing on an inferior system.
    - joatmon-snoo 10y ago
      People have a chance at a first impression once, and the name of your brand is a pretty fucking big first impression. Cockroach was a terrible branding decision.
      - dongslol 10y ago
        > Cockroach was a terrible branding decision. This sentence is true, but whoever is in charge of picking a database for the engineering team shouldn't base his decision on such a criteria.
dongslol 10y ago
Why at your company are people who would evaluate a database by its name rather than its technical merits the ones who decide what database gets used?
- tehlike 10y ago
  "It must be a product from just another startup" is a very valid reason. At the end of the day, we only talk about mssql, mysql, postgres when it comes to rdbms.
  - dongslol 10y ago
    Right, the implication being that nothing especially impressive about CockroachDB stands out, and so we're going to stick with proven options. That's a technical discussion! Why are the people in charge of deciding what database to use the sort of people who would allow their disgust toward an animal whose name is shared by a database to block discussion of its technical features?

corndoge 10y ago

If it's not too much trouble you might consider looking for a new job if management is that obtuse.

emptythought 10y ago
Except this is going to be the common response of management at basically any large, or older company. Not everyone here works at startups, and this isn't something that's easy to just immediately change. This is an issue with a lot of weird or jokey project names, honestly.
jdcarter 10y ago
Everybody makes decisions using both emotion and reason. This is why successful products speak to both the heart and the mind of the customer. Said another way, this is why the marketing department is just as essential to a company's success as the engineering department. I've worked with my company's executive team for quite a while, and they're not obtuse. They are human, however. When I go to them and suggest we trust our data to a new, up-and-coming database, I'm asking quite a lot. The cost of failure is extremely high, so I need to convince them at both an emotional and rational level that the risk is worth it. But when the conversation starts, "let me tell you about Cockroach..." I'm already starting from behind. The reason so many people are fussing about CockroachDB's name is because there's such a huge dissonance between a product that looks fantastic on its technical merits but has a name that triggers terrible images. Have you ever lived in a house with roaches? That's the kind of thing that wedges in your mind in the "never again" category.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  "But when the conversation starts, "let me tell you about Cockroach..." I'm already starting from behind." Attempting to explain how brand recognition works: people browse the web, they see and hear things, they remember unusual things, things they see often, things they notice better because of how they shown in all the noise, etc. After awhile when presented with the choice where they need to make a judgement either under pressure, in a hurry or simply because they don't have enough information, they favor a familiar thing, thing they can recall, rather than the thing they can hardly recall or not at all, no matter how neutral the name is. This is called a familiarity bias and is also the reason behind the phrase "no such thing as bad publicity". So, you are definitely not starting from behind.
- dongslol 10y ago
  That people are both emotional and logical is a non sequitur. The responsibility of picking a database includes trying explicitly to discount how ones feels about petty things like the name and rush to the technical discussion. That's part of what it means to do a good job picking a database. All the best technical people I know would feel a visceral disgust at the thought of a product being discarded due to its name. Someone who was truly suited to attacking the problem of database selection would proactively make sure he wasn't letting nontechnical features into the discussion. Whoever creates the successor to Linux should name it Holocaust OS or something just to mess with people, and laugh at those who due to its name thereby do their computing on an inferior system.
  - joatmon-snoo 10y ago
    People have a chance at a first impression once, and the name of your brand is a pretty fucking big first impression. Cockroach was a terrible branding decision.
    - dongslol 10y ago
      > Cockroach was a terrible branding decision. This sentence is true, but whoever is in charge of picking a database for the engineering team shouldn't base his decision on such a criteria.

dongslol 10y ago

Why at your company are people who would evaluate a database by its name rather than its technical merits the ones who decide what database gets used?

tehlike 10y ago
"It must be a product from just another startup" is a very valid reason. At the end of the day, we only talk about mssql, mysql, postgres when it comes to rdbms.
- dongslol 10y ago
  Right, the implication being that nothing especially impressive about CockroachDB stands out, and so we're going to stick with proven options. That's a technical discussion! Why are the people in charge of deciding what database to use the sort of people who would allow their disgust toward an animal whose name is shared by a database to block discussion of its technical features?