6 ms·

I think "analytics" has become a no-brainer among product managers at all tech companies. It seems like no company, not even GitLab, can escape the irresistible

I think "analytics" has become a no-brainer among product managers at all tech companies. It seems like no company, not even GitLab, can escape the irresistible urge by management to add analytics. Arguments against it within the company are useless, it is just so obvious to management that this is the way to go, it's what all big successful companies do. Only massive public outrage can turn the accepted wisdom of analytics around, and only sometimes. High quality products were made for many years with no analytics, just by thoughtful design, using the product yourself, and gathering some feedback from users manually. Even without statistically representative data from some large target population, you can use your brain to figure out what goes wrong and how to make a good product. And I think lots of products today are quite annoying because of bad decisions based on flawed analytics data. It's hard work to run a good experiment and avoid confounding correlations and plain bugs that throw off the results, and practically nobody today does the hard work. They just run the analytics, get some flawed buggy numbers, interpret them without sufficient care and thoughtfulness, and push through bad design changes. We're data-driven! We're just not looking at the road.

nextos 7y ago
This is my biggest concern about present and future technology. For example, many car manufacturers are sharing real-time sensor data from their vehicles, including GPS, with third parties. There's no clear opt out. Is it anonymized? Can it get misused? Sadly yes. The freedom and transparency we got from PCs where you can always know what is going on, with some caveats, is missing from all other platforms. And it's really worrying.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  If we let them they will do it to PC's eventually too. We have to fight for our rights. I think cell phones have normalized it for far too many people.
  - mtsr 7y ago
    What do you mean, eventually? You haven't followed the Windows analytics debacle?
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      Win10 analytics (and forced updates) is what finally pushed me to exclusively using linux after many years of dual-booting. There are still choices thankfully (for now).
    - arminiusreturns 7y ago
      We still have gnu/linux for the time being. I went linux only many years ago and have loved every minute of it.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Since the mandatory telemetry in Windows 10 (and the backports to Windows 7 onwards if you trusted Microsoft and installed their recommended updates) we don't even have that transparency on PCs, sadly. But I agree, it's a serious problem. The abuse has become so widespread that I am now in favour of heavyweight statutory regulation and severe penalties for violations. I don't see any other way we come back from this situation now. Competition in the market has utterly failed.
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    If you really care, use Linux.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      That's great unless you need software that is not available on Linux. Not all businesses have that choice, but they might still care about privacy and security.
      - iforgotpassword 7y ago
        True, but at least for personal use you could make that sacrifice of replacing and re-learning stuff as much as possible. Tbh, from an employee's POV I don't even care that much if my company wants to take that risk.
        Silhouette 7y ago
        I'm the person (one of them) responsible for my own businesses, so I look at things a bit differently. It's on me and my colleagues if we don't have proper security in place, or we violate confidentiality agreements or NDAs or GDPR or other privacy/data protection rules. Looking at the amount of essential software and equipment that is now actively hostile to even basic security and privacy, when you're talking about things like your networking gear or your operating systems or your everyday development tools betraying you, it's now all but impossible to buy new stuff and still be professional about safeguarding privacy and security now, and it shouldn't be. It's going to hurt a lot of people sooner or later, probably sooner, and it's going to cost a lot of businesses a lot of money too.
dillonmckay 7y ago
“And I think lots of products today are quite annoying because of bad decisions based on flawed analytics data.” I agree with this, and it seems to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe this to be responsible for the decline in Apple’s various device OSs.
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
My theory is that they hunt like lunatics this engagement and time spent number. My engagement increased with new Gmail because it's slow as fuck. Of course I click around like a clown and wait, probably product manager happy that people use their product for longer now.
- srrr 7y ago
  Maybe your "engagement" increased, but in this case your "time to task completion" did not. In most cases analytics is much more nuanced than you might think. And the reason why something got worse for you is because it got better for someone else.
  - finnthehuman 7y ago
    >your "time to task completion" did not So they're driving down the time it takes to do what they magically infer I'm trying to do. Is this why whenever I try to organize my gmail box I give up 10 minutes in because the UI is slow and bullshit? Because it's good for metrics that I can't make my gmail account anywhere near as useful as my work email?
- distances 7y ago
  It's amazing how slow Google products are becoming. Firebase is my own pet peeve: opening a single crash report takes easily 20-30 seconds. It's unbelievable. Should be a split second for fluid workflow. Aren't they using their own products? How is this acceptable to any engineer or manager? I'd use anything else for the slowness alone if I could decide the tools at work myself.
  - crdoconnor 7y ago
    Are you using Firefox or Chrome?
    - Jamwinner 7y ago
      I am going to report it is slow on both, when the bs is disabled. Especially slow on other browsers. You know there are other browsers right? Google seems confused and angered when I dont use one of the 2 they own. Firefox is only around because they fund it discreetly to avoid antitrust, while is still sends them nearly all the same tracking metrics.
VadimPR 7y ago
Ever asked designers of those high quality products if they would have loved data analytics on their products? I bet they'd say they would have.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Would I love an extra thousand dollars per month on my account? Sure I would. Doesn't mean I'm going to cheat people to get it, even though I could.
  - gonzo 7y ago
    But if there was an opportunity to do so, and it required some work, would you?
- Silhouette 7y ago
  The data you are likely to get from this sort of spyware is typically less useful than even a few sessions watching real users actually using your product and actively collecting their voluntary feedback. Source: I am basically the person you are talking about, in one of my current roles.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Sharlin 7y ago
Analytics seems to be a given even among developers. Something you ”obviously” put in just because it might be useful at some point.
microcolonel 7y ago
It seems that product quality is often lowest in products with the most analytics.
paulie_a 7y ago
The amazing thing is all that data is worthless. It hasn't improved things, ads are still stupid, products are just as slow and broken.
cookiecaper 7y ago
This is also why everything is mobile-first now. So many web-based applications insist that users install a mobile app for half of the functionality because that gives them a much stickier place to attach. On a browser, it's drive-by, and your ability to track users is gone once they leave your site, especially with vendors like Mozilla and Apple implementing third-party cookie blockers by default and the ubiquity of adblock. On a phone, if you install something, you'll probably leave it for at least a few days, and if you watch logcat, you'll notice that many of these apps are anything but patiently waiting for the user to decide open it up again.
- Xelbair 7y ago
  >On a browser, it's drive-by, and your ability to track users is gone once they leave your site, especially with vendors like Mozilla and Apple implementing third-party cookie blockers by default and the ubiquity of adblock. There is a way to hijack the back button, i have no idea if it has been fixed, there are also tracking cookies so they can track you cross sites anyway.

nextos 7y ago

This is my biggest concern about present and future technology. For example, many car manufacturers are sharing real-time sensor data from their vehicles, including GPS, with third parties. There's no clear opt out. Is it anonymized? Can it get misused? Sadly yes. The freedom and transparency we got from PCs where you can always know what is going on, with some caveats, is missing from all other platforms. And it's really worrying.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 7y ago
If we let them they will do it to PC's eventually too. We have to fight for our rights. I think cell phones have normalized it for far too many people.
- mtsr 7y ago
  What do you mean, eventually? You haven't followed the Windows analytics debacle?
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    Win10 analytics (and forced updates) is what finally pushed me to exclusively using linux after many years of dual-booting. There are still choices thankfully (for now).
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    We still have gnu/linux for the time being. I went linux only many years ago and have loved every minute of it.
Silhouette 7y ago
Since the mandatory telemetry in Windows 10 (and the backports to Windows 7 onwards if you trusted Microsoft and installed their recommended updates) we don't even have that transparency on PCs, sadly. But I agree, it's a serious problem. The abuse has become so widespread that I am now in favour of heavyweight statutory regulation and severe penalties for violations. I don't see any other way we come back from this situation now. Competition in the market has utterly failed.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  If you really care, use Linux.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    That's great unless you need software that is not available on Linux. Not all businesses have that choice, but they might still care about privacy and security.
    - iforgotpassword 7y ago
      True, but at least for personal use you could make that sacrifice of replacing and re-learning stuff as much as possible. Tbh, from an employee's POV I don't even care that much if my company wants to take that risk.
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        I'm the person (one of them) responsible for my own businesses, so I look at things a bit differently. It's on me and my colleagues if we don't have proper security in place, or we violate confidentiality agreements or NDAs or GDPR or other privacy/data protection rules. Looking at the amount of essential software and equipment that is now actively hostile to even basic security and privacy, when you're talking about things like your networking gear or your operating systems or your everyday development tools betraying you, it's now all but impossible to buy new stuff and still be professional about safeguarding privacy and security now, and it shouldn't be. It's going to hurt a lot of people sooner or later, probably sooner, and it's going to cost a lot of businesses a lot of money too.

dillonmckay 7y ago

“And I think lots of products today are quite annoying because of bad decisions based on flawed analytics data.” I agree with this, and it seems to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe this to be responsible for the decline in Apple’s various device OSs.

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

My theory is that they hunt like lunatics this engagement and time spent number. My engagement increased with new Gmail because it's slow as fuck. Of course I click around like a clown and wait, probably product manager happy that people use their product for longer now.

srrr 7y ago
Maybe your "engagement" increased, but in this case your "time to task completion" did not. In most cases analytics is much more nuanced than you might think. And the reason why something got worse for you is because it got better for someone else.
- finnthehuman 7y ago
  >your "time to task completion" did not So they're driving down the time it takes to do what they magically infer I'm trying to do. Is this why whenever I try to organize my gmail box I give up 10 minutes in because the UI is slow and bullshit? Because it's good for metrics that I can't make my gmail account anywhere near as useful as my work email?
distances 7y ago
It's amazing how slow Google products are becoming. Firebase is my own pet peeve: opening a single crash report takes easily 20-30 seconds. It's unbelievable. Should be a split second for fluid workflow. Aren't they using their own products? How is this acceptable to any engineer or manager? I'd use anything else for the slowness alone if I could decide the tools at work myself.
- crdoconnor 7y ago
  Are you using Firefox or Chrome?
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    I am going to report it is slow on both, when the bs is disabled. Especially slow on other browsers. You know there are other browsers right? Google seems confused and angered when I dont use one of the 2 they own. Firefox is only around because they fund it discreetly to avoid antitrust, while is still sends them nearly all the same tracking metrics.

VadimPR 7y ago

Ever asked designers of those high quality products if they would have loved data analytics on their products? I bet they'd say they would have.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Would I love an extra thousand dollars per month on my account? Sure I would. Doesn't mean I'm going to cheat people to get it, even though I could.
- gonzo 7y ago
  But if there was an opportunity to do so, and it required some work, would you?
Silhouette 7y ago
The data you are likely to get from this sort of spyware is typically less useful than even a few sessions watching real users actually using your product and actively collecting their voluntary feedback. Source: I am basically the person you are talking about, in one of my current roles.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Sharlin 7y ago

Analytics seems to be a given even among developers. Something you ”obviously” put in just because it might be useful at some point.

microcolonel 7y ago

It seems that product quality is often lowest in products with the most analytics.

paulie_a 7y ago

The amazing thing is all that data is worthless. It hasn't improved things, ads are still stupid, products are just as slow and broken.

cookiecaper 7y ago

This is also why everything is mobile-first now. So many web-based applications insist that users install a mobile app for half of the functionality because that gives them a much stickier place to attach. On a browser, it's drive-by, and your ability to track users is gone once they leave your site, especially with vendors like Mozilla and Apple implementing third-party cookie blockers by default and the ubiquity of adblock. On a phone, if you install something, you'll probably leave it for at least a few days, and if you watch logcat, you'll notice that many of these apps are anything but patiently waiting for the user to decide open it up again.

Xelbair 7y ago
>On a browser, it's drive-by, and your ability to track users is gone once they leave your site, especially with vendors like Mozilla and Apple implementing third-party cookie blockers by default and the ubiquity of adblock. There is a way to hijack the back button, i have no idea if it has been fixed, there are also tracking cookies so they can track you cross sites anyway.