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> This shows "a new Sony" and should be applauded by investors, SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. analyst Ryosuke Katsura wrote in a report. “Management is adapting ra

> This shows "a new Sony" and should be applauded by investors, SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. analyst Ryosuke Katsura wrote in a report. “Management is adapting rapidly to change." Uh, no. This shows that the developers have absolutely no control, say, or ownership over their work. Things like this happen in companies (or divisions within a company) right before their best people jump ship because they are so poorly respected they are literally not given the time of day by management. I'm reminded of Ray Kassar's comment about programmers being at the same level of someone who puts the game boxes together.

ARandomerDude 7y ago
> This shows that the developers have absolutely no control, say, or ownership over their work. Developer here. What role would you see developers playing? This is more strategic than technical, so I wouldn't expect much developer input at this stage. If management asked and the developers didn't like it, people would say "why the opinion charade?". So the only options are don't partner or get a strong (whatever that means) majority vote from the developers before doing anything. Both seem like bad options to me.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  Let me try (it's a long one) Software is a new form of literacy. Literacy makes all the difference - you don't hire illiterates to run companies, they might be clever, politically astute, but the decisions they make will be wrong from the important perspective of "does this make sense in a literate world". Imagine you were hiring people for a trading company in the 16th Century. If the top people could not read or write, would you expect that trading company to perform as well as a competitor that had hired its board, its execs, as those who were able to red and write. Who expected to read the ships manifest? Companies that ignore the developers are companies that are ignoring what literate people think is sensible. Now sometimes that will be the "right" thing to do, but increasingly *when illiterates and literates clash over policy, the literate side is more likely to be the right one to take" Just my 2 cents
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    I honestly don't understand the point you're trying to make. As far as I can tell you are saying that people that can code are fundamentally superior to everyone else, to the point where everyone else is useless not only to corporations but society?
    - Nullabillity 7y ago
      It's helpful to understand the fundamentals of the area you're making strategic decisions about. Even better if you're the one who has to deal with the aftermath, so that you have some incentive to learn for the next time. The typical C-level dictatorship provides neither of those (besides just being a plain miserable environment to work in).
      - dageshi 7y ago
        I think the C-Level dictatorship know the relative strength & weaknesses of their company. Sony isn't good at online services and its infrastructure relative to other companies like Microsoft and Google. It took them a decade to allow users to actually change their user names on PSN because they were effectively using the username as a unique primary key and associating all game save data against locally and remotely. How are they going to make a Google Stadia style service that requires custom hardware units in data centers around the world with the lowest possible latency to the end user? And how are they going to do it quickly? I guarantee Microsoft has a competitor to stadia ready to go, they have the data centers, they have the development expertise and they've been pushing xbox apps onto every platform that will take them. If Microsoft will give them a good long term rate on the custom azure instances that the xbox team will be using to host the games then that's probably a whole lot better than Sony trying to roll their own.
        gambiting 7y ago
        >>How are they going to make a Google Stadia style service that requires custom hardware units in data centers around the world with the lowest possible latency to the end user? And how are they going to do it quickly? I mean....they already do, so in that sense they are ahead of Stadia. Playstation Now is a real service that exists and which you can use already, and which required custom hardware in datacentres around the world. Now we can argue whether it's as good as Stadia promises to be, but that's purely theoretical at this point - one product is an actual commercial thing you can get, the other one exists in beta stages.
bshoemaker 7y ago
Lol yeah the developers build the thing and the business people run the business
- honestoHeminway 7y ago
  Thats pretty snarky, well im no expert on snark, but can you please give me your current snarky-ness status as a number of improvement over previous years of snark. If you did not improve snarklevel growth to a rate of 1.41 you are fired.
caymanjim 7y ago
I'm a developer and low-level manager, and wouldn't expect to have much input in this kind of decision. Especially in a behemoth like Sony. This is C-level-executive decision making territory. I might have something to say about the idea from a technical perspective, if asked, and if that aspect of the platform were my purview, and I suspect they discussed it with plenty of knowledgeable people at some level. I'm sure some people who were developing their in-house cloud solution feel like they've been blindsided, but if they'd succeeded, they wouldn't be in this position. The article says they've been struggling with it. They likely had a chance and missed benchmarks one time too many. They're likely better off using a major cloud provider anyway. They've already solved the big problems.
- dhimes 7y ago
  I could get on board with this if the devs had a say in setting those benchmarks.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Would they set reasonable benchmarks, like market share and revenue? That is what matters in strategy decisions.
    - dhimes 7y ago
      Why would they set those benchmarks? Dev benchmarks are things like delivery schedules, development budget and capability trade-offs.
  - caymanjim 7y ago
    Any good executive consults with their subordinates to create realistic objectives. This is so fundamental that it's implied. That's the CTO's job. They will in turn rely on their subordinates all the way down to the lowly developers. Are you suggesting that developers deserve some kind of vote? They're a cog in the machine. Sony isn't a democracy or a worker's collective. As a developer myself, I'm not trying to diminish the role. I like to think I can provide a valuable perspective and that I'd be consulted about my small part. I'm certain that's exactly what Sony did, because they are a successful, well-run company that's been doing this longer than I've been alive. Beyond that, no, the developers shouldn't have much say. Their role is to help determine what's required to achieve the objectives set by management. Good management will consult with them, set goals, and change tack if the objectives aren't met. If they still can't achieve the objectives in a timely and cost-effective way, management will replace them and go with a vendor. This is all right and good.
bshoemaker 7y ago
It honestly shocks me the degree to which some software developers are able to live with a complete lack of self-awareness. Developers absolutely rant about product managers giving any sort of technical feedback, and yet they're perfectly willing to act as if they should be included in corporate level business strategy. I don't mean all software developers, but it's a common refrain on this forum.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  The thing about developers, and "tech" people in general, is that they're prone to believing they're smarter than everyone else. I'm not sure why that misguided notion persists in our culture, but it does.
  - pm90 7y ago
    Convince me otherwise. There is a reason why developers make how much they do despite most developers not having the social skills to negotiate aggressively for good comp.
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      > There is a reason why developers make how much they do... The reason is that they're temporarily in demand. Ask the people who were around during the dot-com bust how much the average programmer was valued then.
duxup 7y ago
>I'm reminded of Ray Kassar's comment about programmers being at the same level of someone who puts the game boxes together. As someone who has worked in a number of places and ended up programming... I find this absurd. Lots of programers have no idea how good they have it / influence they have. Just because someone could make a call without their input doesn't mean they are like manual labor.
pavlov 7y ago
Tech companies constantly have teams building tools and products that never ship because strategy changed. The developer-centric FAANGs probably do even more of this than the more traditional big corporations.
icegreentea2 7y ago
There's no evidence that no technical consultation was done. It's very likely that senior technical staff were consulted, and asked to keep it quiet (and succeeded). All this report says is that rank and file had to be calmed down after the reveal (fair enough). That doesn't mean that technical input wasn't asked or, or even listened to. Like, I can totally see something like HQ asking "What would it take for you to grow X, achieve Y, by Z", and then PlayStation unit saying something like "M people, N money, O risk". And then HQ was like "oh, MS can do better than that".
PaulHoule 7y ago
Does it really mean anything? The PS4 and Xbox One use very similar hardware. In fact, other than DRM, neither is that different from a gaming PC. It seems you'd have no trouble running PS4, PS5, Xbox One or Xbox Two games on the same hardware box that would be racked in an Azure data center. For that matter, Microsoft has Azure data centers all over the place and very good networking for those data centers. A few years back I noticed that the nearest Azure data center had 35 ms latency to me compared to AMZN's us-east-1 which had 50 ms. (Maybe that is why AMZN built us-east-2 across the street!) I don't see any reason why Sony should build a whole bunch of data centers and struggle with second-best networking when MSFT has already made the investment and is continuing to make the investment in a great data center product.

ARandomerDude 7y ago

> This shows that the developers have absolutely no control, say, or ownership over their work. Developer here. What role would you see developers playing? This is more strategic than technical, so I wouldn't expect much developer input at this stage. If management asked and the developers didn't like it, people would say "why the opinion charade?". So the only options are don't partner or get a strong (whatever that means) majority vote from the developers before doing anything. Both seem like bad options to me.

lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Let me try (it's a long one) Software is a new form of literacy. Literacy makes all the difference - you don't hire illiterates to run companies, they might be clever, politically astute, but the decisions they make will be wrong from the important perspective of "does this make sense in a literate world". Imagine you were hiring people for a trading company in the 16th Century. If the top people could not read or write, would you expect that trading company to perform as well as a competitor that had hired its board, its execs, as those who were able to red and write. Who expected to read the ships manifest? Companies that ignore the developers are companies that are ignoring what literate people think is sensible. Now sometimes that will be the "right" thing to do, but increasingly *when illiterates and literates clash over policy, the literate side is more likely to be the right one to take" Just my 2 cents
- MegaButts 7y ago
  I honestly don't understand the point you're trying to make. As far as I can tell you are saying that people that can code are fundamentally superior to everyone else, to the point where everyone else is useless not only to corporations but society?
  - Nullabillity 7y ago
    It's helpful to understand the fundamentals of the area you're making strategic decisions about. Even better if you're the one who has to deal with the aftermath, so that you have some incentive to learn for the next time. The typical C-level dictatorship provides neither of those (besides just being a plain miserable environment to work in).
    - dageshi 7y ago
      I think the C-Level dictatorship know the relative strength & weaknesses of their company. Sony isn't good at online services and its infrastructure relative to other companies like Microsoft and Google. It took them a decade to allow users to actually change their user names on PSN because they were effectively using the username as a unique primary key and associating all game save data against locally and remotely. How are they going to make a Google Stadia style service that requires custom hardware units in data centers around the world with the lowest possible latency to the end user? And how are they going to do it quickly? I guarantee Microsoft has a competitor to stadia ready to go, they have the data centers, they have the development expertise and they've been pushing xbox apps onto every platform that will take them. If Microsoft will give them a good long term rate on the custom azure instances that the xbox team will be using to host the games then that's probably a whole lot better than Sony trying to roll their own.
      - gambiting 7y ago
        >>How are they going to make a Google Stadia style service that requires custom hardware units in data centers around the world with the lowest possible latency to the end user? And how are they going to do it quickly? I mean....they already do, so in that sense they are ahead of Stadia. Playstation Now is a real service that exists and which you can use already, and which required custom hardware in datacentres around the world. Now we can argue whether it's as good as Stadia promises to be, but that's purely theoretical at this point - one product is an actual commercial thing you can get, the other one exists in beta stages.

bshoemaker 7y ago

Lol yeah the developers build the thing and the business people run the business

honestoHeminway 7y ago
Thats pretty snarky, well im no expert on snark, but can you please give me your current snarky-ness status as a number of improvement over previous years of snark. If you did not improve snarklevel growth to a rate of 1.41 you are fired.

caymanjim 7y ago

I'm a developer and low-level manager, and wouldn't expect to have much input in this kind of decision. Especially in a behemoth like Sony. This is C-level-executive decision making territory. I might have something to say about the idea from a technical perspective, if asked, and if that aspect of the platform were my purview, and I suspect they discussed it with plenty of knowledgeable people at some level. I'm sure some people who were developing their in-house cloud solution feel like they've been blindsided, but if they'd succeeded, they wouldn't be in this position. The article says they've been struggling with it. They likely had a chance and missed benchmarks one time too many. They're likely better off using a major cloud provider anyway. They've already solved the big problems.

dhimes 7y ago
I could get on board with this if the devs had a say in setting those benchmarks.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Would they set reasonable benchmarks, like market share and revenue? That is what matters in strategy decisions.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    Why would they set those benchmarks? Dev benchmarks are things like delivery schedules, development budget and capability trade-offs.
- caymanjim 7y ago
  Any good executive consults with their subordinates to create realistic objectives. This is so fundamental that it's implied. That's the CTO's job. They will in turn rely on their subordinates all the way down to the lowly developers. Are you suggesting that developers deserve some kind of vote? They're a cog in the machine. Sony isn't a democracy or a worker's collective. As a developer myself, I'm not trying to diminish the role. I like to think I can provide a valuable perspective and that I'd be consulted about my small part. I'm certain that's exactly what Sony did, because they are a successful, well-run company that's been doing this longer than I've been alive. Beyond that, no, the developers shouldn't have much say. Their role is to help determine what's required to achieve the objectives set by management. Good management will consult with them, set goals, and change tack if the objectives aren't met. If they still can't achieve the objectives in a timely and cost-effective way, management will replace them and go with a vendor. This is all right and good.

bshoemaker 7y ago

It honestly shocks me the degree to which some software developers are able to live with a complete lack of self-awareness. Developers absolutely rant about product managers giving any sort of technical feedback, and yet they're perfectly willing to act as if they should be included in corporate level business strategy. I don't mean all software developers, but it's a common refrain on this forum.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
The thing about developers, and "tech" people in general, is that they're prone to believing they're smarter than everyone else. I'm not sure why that misguided notion persists in our culture, but it does.
- pm90 7y ago
  Convince me otherwise. There is a reason why developers make how much they do despite most developers not having the social skills to negotiate aggressively for good comp.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > There is a reason why developers make how much they do... The reason is that they're temporarily in demand. Ask the people who were around during the dot-com bust how much the average programmer was valued then.

duxup 7y ago

>I'm reminded of Ray Kassar's comment about programmers being at the same level of someone who puts the game boxes together. As someone who has worked in a number of places and ended up programming... I find this absurd. Lots of programers have no idea how good they have it / influence they have. Just because someone could make a call without their input doesn't mean they are like manual labor.

pavlov 7y ago

Tech companies constantly have teams building tools and products that never ship because strategy changed. The developer-centric FAANGs probably do even more of this than the more traditional big corporations.

icegreentea2 7y ago

There's no evidence that no technical consultation was done. It's very likely that senior technical staff were consulted, and asked to keep it quiet (and succeeded). All this report says is that rank and file had to be calmed down after the reveal (fair enough). That doesn't mean that technical input wasn't asked or, or even listened to. Like, I can totally see something like HQ asking "What would it take for you to grow X, achieve Y, by Z", and then PlayStation unit saying something like "M people, N money, O risk". And then HQ was like "oh, MS can do better than that".

PaulHoule 7y ago

Does it really mean anything? The PS4 and Xbox One use very similar hardware. In fact, other than DRM, neither is that different from a gaming PC. It seems you'd have no trouble running PS4, PS5, Xbox One or Xbox Two games on the same hardware box that would be racked in an Azure data center. For that matter, Microsoft has Azure data centers all over the place and very good networking for those data centers. A few years back I noticed that the nearest Azure data center had 35 ms latency to me compared to AMZN's us-east-1 which had 50 ms. (Maybe that is why AMZN built us-east-2 across the street!) I don't see any reason why Sony should build a whole bunch of data centers and struggle with second-best networking when MSFT has already made the investment and is continuing to make the investment in a great data center product.