4 ms·

At some point, an app is done or close to done. At that point, maintenance to keep the app compatible is all that is needed. So, the company should downscale. O

by rocqua 9y ago

At some point, an app is done or close to done. At that point, maintenance to keep the app compatible is all that is needed. So, the company should downscale. Only, companies don't. As such, the subscription pays for way more than simple upkeep. It pays for a large development team to continue to add features to an app that is essentially already done.

posguy 9y ago
This is caused by every VC demanding that their stable of startups all shoot for the moon and become multi-billion dollar companies. If moonshots weren't such a high priority, and instead startups focused on building a successful business, perhaps there wouldn't be so many dead startups. Doing a few tens of million a year in revenue isn't a terrible place to be after a few years!
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  If profit motive (aka greed) wasn't the primary driver of Western Capitalism ...
- ballenf 9y ago
  Taking (or seeking) VC means that you don't want to be a gradual, incrementally growing company.
fauigerzigerk 9y ago
That's true and not limited to paid apps either. Twitter spent over $700 million on research and development in 2016. They made a loss of over $450 million. To be fair, their R&D doesn't exclusively pay for an improved 140 character text box. It also goes towards staying attractive for advertisers and trying new ideas. But still, the gap between the rather modest progress that Twitter is making on any front and their enormous costs (not just on R&D) is striking.
josephg 9y ago
Yes, this is a constant sourse of amazement for me too! The chrome team at google is well over 1000 people. (The opensource code base now has over 800 committers). The initial release had 100 committers[1], so probably about as many man hours have gone into google chrome in the last year than were put into the project in its first ~5 years of existence or something. In the last year just shy of 1.5 million non-blank lines of code[2] have been added to the browser, which is more code than was in the whole browser when it was first launched, webkit included. But what does all that new code do?? I'd challenge anyone who's not a developer to name a single new feature added to chrome in the last year. I'm a web developer and I struggle to name more than 5 changes. Its easy to pick on chrome because the numbers are mostly-public. But the same is probably true of facebook.com, ms office and all sorts of other big company products. As features compound, the marginal value of each additional line of code added becomes vanishingly small. (All the really useful features have already been added, and project iteration gets much slower in big projects). There are thousands of engineers working on facebook.com. If they all quietly left and were never replaced, how long do you think it would take before anyone in the public would notice? 6 months? 1 year? Longer? And if thats the case, what a waste of that huge pool of talent. If you could leave your job without any of your users noticing or caring, what a waste of your education and your potential. Quit and start that company you've always been dreaming about starting. Go do literally anything of substance. [1] https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/contributors/summary https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/contributors/summary [2] https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summary https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_s...
- dannyw 9y ago
  The incremental value of one software engineer working on tiny things can still be positive if they're working on a product that's used by hundreds of millions of people. For example, a small feature or redesign that increases engagement of a feature by 10% can make millions for Facebook.
  - lugg 9y ago
    I think you could argue that small things like that can be done by a small team.
tomc1985 9y ago
Nobody seems to want apps to be "done" anymore. Must have all the features!
ja27 9y ago
maintenance to keep the app compatible is all that is needed That's not insignificant. Look how many iOS apps will be abandoned when iOS 11 forces 64-bit compatibility.
- mantas 9y ago
  Most apps support 64-bit for quite a long time. Aside from games, in most cases it's super easy to support 64-bit. And most games wouldn't really do well with subscription payment either...
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
It used to be the other way round, companies like Adobe would pile on all sorts of shit to justify the cost of an upgrade. Now the incentive is to keep the customer happy so they continue to subscribe. This could mean more bug fixes and less dubious features.
- danieldk 9y ago
  Now the incentive is to keep the customer happy so they continue to subscribe. This could mean more bug fixes and less dubious features. Or you just keep the customer hostage using proprietary data formats and/or silos? Of course, this does not apply to every application (eg. Markdown editors), but it is a tried an tested strategy. And before you needed to incentivize paid upgrades, but with a subscription, it's 'keep paying or lose access to your data'. And what if the company goes under? Previously, you could just keep running the software (heck, some companies are still running old VMS, DOS, and OS/2 software). Now, it's over once the license server that checks that you paid your subscription is down. Of course, some non-subscription software requires activation as well, but a lot of ISVs just use registration codes.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    "And what if the company goes under?" That's been a problem since before subscriptions became mainstream, even software with a perpetual license has often required activation.
kartickv 9y ago
If an app is done, build another app, rather than downscaling the company. There are many unsolved problems.

by rocqua 9y ago

posguy 9y ago

This is caused by every VC demanding that their stable of startups all shoot for the moon and become multi-billion dollar companies. If moonshots weren't such a high priority, and instead startups focused on building a successful business, perhaps there wouldn't be so many dead startups. Doing a few tens of million a year in revenue isn't a terrible place to be after a few years!

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
If profit motive (aka greed) wasn't the primary driver of Western Capitalism ...
ballenf 9y ago
Taking (or seeking) VC means that you don't want to be a gradual, incrementally growing company.

fauigerzigerk 9y ago

That's true and not limited to paid apps either. Twitter spent over $700 million on research and development in 2016. They made a loss of over $450 million. To be fair, their R&D doesn't exclusively pay for an improved 140 character text box. It also goes towards staying attractive for advertisers and trying new ideas. But still, the gap between the rather modest progress that Twitter is making on any front and their enormous costs (not just on R&D) is striking.

josephg 9y ago

Yes, this is a constant sourse of amazement for me too! The chrome team at google is well over 1000 people. (The opensource code base now has over 800 committers). The initial release had 100 committers[1], so probably about as many man hours have gone into google chrome in the last year than were put into the project in its first ~5 years of existence or something. In the last year just shy of 1.5 million non-blank lines of code[2] have been added to the browser, which is more code than was in the whole browser when it was first launched, webkit included. But what does all that new code do?? I'd challenge anyone who's not a developer to name a single new feature added to chrome in the last year. I'm a web developer and I struggle to name more than 5 changes. Its easy to pick on chrome because the numbers are mostly-public. But the same is probably true of facebook.com, ms office and all sorts of other big company products. As features compound, the marginal value of each additional line of code added becomes vanishingly small. (All the really useful features have already been added, and project iteration gets much slower in big projects). There are thousands of engineers working on facebook.com. If they all quietly left and were never replaced, how long do you think it would take before anyone in the public would notice? 6 months? 1 year? Longer? And if thats the case, what a waste of that huge pool of talent. If you could leave your job without any of your users noticing or caring, what a waste of your education and your potential. Quit and start that company you've always been dreaming about starting. Go do literally anything of substance. [1] https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/contributors/summary https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/contributors/summary [2] https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summary https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_s...

dannyw 9y ago
The incremental value of one software engineer working on tiny things can still be positive if they're working on a product that's used by hundreds of millions of people. For example, a small feature or redesign that increases engagement of a feature by 10% can make millions for Facebook.
- lugg 9y ago
  I think you could argue that small things like that can be done by a small team.

tomc1985 9y ago

Nobody seems to want apps to be "done" anymore. Must have all the features!

ja27 9y ago

maintenance to keep the app compatible is all that is needed That's not insignificant. Look how many iOS apps will be abandoned when iOS 11 forces 64-bit compatibility.

mantas 9y ago
Most apps support 64-bit for quite a long time. Aside from games, in most cases it's super easy to support 64-bit. And most games wouldn't really do well with subscription payment either...

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

It used to be the other way round, companies like Adobe would pile on all sorts of shit to justify the cost of an upgrade. Now the incentive is to keep the customer happy so they continue to subscribe. This could mean more bug fixes and less dubious features.

danieldk 9y ago
Now the incentive is to keep the customer happy so they continue to subscribe. This could mean more bug fixes and less dubious features. Or you just keep the customer hostage using proprietary data formats and/or silos? Of course, this does not apply to every application (eg. Markdown editors), but it is a tried an tested strategy. And before you needed to incentivize paid upgrades, but with a subscription, it's 'keep paying or lose access to your data'. And what if the company goes under? Previously, you could just keep running the software (heck, some companies are still running old VMS, DOS, and OS/2 software). Now, it's over once the license server that checks that you paid your subscription is down. Of course, some non-subscription software requires activation as well, but a lot of ISVs just use registration codes.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  "And what if the company goes under?" That's been a problem since before subscriptions became mainstream, even software with a perpetual license has often required activation.

kartickv 9y ago

If an app is done, build another app, rather than downscaling the company. There are many unsolved problems.