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Facebook requires that you pay them enormous money but you do not matter to them at all otherwise, as there are always more suckers out there to replace you if
by coldcode 6y ago
Facebook requires that you pay them enormous money but you do not matter to them at all otherwise, as there are always more suckers out there to replace you if you leave. Both Google and Facebook understand that support costs them money, so they don't provide any, which lets them keep the money. Quality costs money, so not having quality lets them keep more money since people are desperate enough to put up with a lack of it to point ads at 2B people. The market for ads is completely captured by Facebook and Google, so you either put up with no support and no quality, or you can't play.
It's like living in a run down tenement, no matter how many rats and roaches you have to deal with due to a lack of maintenance, you have no choice if the alternative is the street. Yet the owner makes money no matter how horrific the building.
- GrinningFool 6y agoWhen your market and customer base is _that_ big, maybe you have scaled past what you are reasonably capable of supporting with actual humans.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y agothat sounds like ‘scaled too far’ then
- ben_w 6y agoOr “not actually scaled”
- jakub_g 6y agoAlphabet had $34B net income in 2019, FB $18B. They could hire a legion of developers in any place which is not California/Switzerland, whose only responsibility would be bugfixing, and it would barely make a dent in their numbers.
- georgeecollins 6y agoThere are those "mythical man month" problems along the lines of you can't hire legions of programmers and know that you are actually reducing bugs more than you are creating them. I am sure Facebook and Google could do a better job of support if it was there top priority, but it probably isn't just an issue of cost. It also requires attention, prioritization, engineering-- which each company probably has a finite amount of.
- tpxl 6y agoYou can instead hire a million support personnel for that kind of money.
- creddit 6y agoThat only cost you $18K/yr??? Not so sure.
- tpxl 6y agoAverage wage in most of the developed world is < 18K/year.
- georgeecollins 6y agoAgain, my point is it is not just the number of people that make software work. It takes vision, the focus of the organization, prioritization.
- creddit 6y agoWage != cost. It is just one component. Not sure of your definition of “developed world” but the median wage (less than average) of the US and other OECD countries is typically much closer to $30K.
- jakub_g 6y agoFor sure, when creating core technology it's better to have 2 people do it than to have 20 people. But when you have stable core and need to polish the edges, additional headcount with proper incentives should be able to make a difference. Part of the problem is (possibly biggest) lack of incentives all over the chain and focusing too much (solely) on a small set of business metrics.