14 ms·

No-Code and the IKEA Effect: Software lock-in evolved to make us never churn

120 points by maguay 6y ago

benjaminjosephw 6y ago
> We may have complained for decades when software locked us in; now, we’re happy to stay. Being willing to trade-off higher costs and less control in order to use new technology is commonplace in consumer tech. Nobody has ever been "happy" about this vendor lock-in, why would no-code be any different? The current proprietary tools are valuable but they don't allow users to export their creations between vendors offering the same functionality - that means they are more locked-in then ever. Users have the added emotional element of having to abandon their creation and accept the sunk-cost if they want to switch. I'm quite sure that nobody is happy about that fact.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > I'm quite sure that nobody is happy about that fact. Indeed. I think the original post may have mistaken effect for cause. We can look across the course of human history at many cases of authority figures and those who interact with them, but generally, forcing any kind of lock-in has weird second order effects, and sometimes "the cure is worse than the ailment" -- so too I think it could be here. What would be needed to show this? Portability, for one. The open-core model exists for a reason. Software lock-in needs to be voluntary to be defendable. If you don't make it easy for your users to switch, you have no proof that they are staying with you because you are the best option, not just what they are forced to use. This can be very dangerous for an organization which takes its incumbence for granted, which is basically every large B2B sales-led SaaS org, almost by default. It means that when an upstart figures out how to out-execute you, you will have ossified into a living fossil whose organs they will consume from the inside out all in one go, rather than getting advanced notice ahead of time while you can still course correct. Convenience is great and all, but on a long enough corporate lifecycle/lifespan (and they seem to be getting shorter and shorter these days), un-sustainability eventually takes its toll.
  - ozim 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_portability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_portability There is data portability in EU and you can get all your data... But it probably is useless or at least not as useful as in context of the SaaS you were using.
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      There's a legal requirement for data portability. That's a different thing.
wintorez 6y ago
I've come to the conclusion that code is temporary, and is meant to be discarded after a while. Hardware change, requirements change, people change. The things that are permanent are data and methods. That's why I think as long as you have documented and defined your methods (i.e. business logic) well, and your data is portable, you shouldn't worry much about vendor lock-in in the long run.
- Edmond 6y ago
  Agreed. The primary reason the software development field has evolved to be preoccupied with saving/re-using/inter-op code is because of the difficulty of building even the most trivial piece of software. Unfortunately code hoarding is simply a reflection of the age-old human flaw of wanting to recoup sunk cost, you assume if you've invested a lot of time into something, it must be worth holding on to for as long as possible :) If software was as easy to make as a piece of office stationary is easy to write on, no one would care about code reuse/saving/interop...you don't see anyone saving post-it notes or even excel docs for indefinite reuse.
  - wintorez 6y ago
    I couldn't agree more. A personal anecdote; I used to think about what would be my legacy as software developer? Anything that I write would be obsolete in few years. Nothing I wrote back then remained working. This thought was depressing me. Then I realized that what I'm actually creating and maintaining is not code. It's the mindset behind the code, and the skillset to convert ideas to working pieces of software. My legacy would be to learn through experimenting, and to help others learn the same.
    - bonoboTP 6y ago
      Who has a legacy anyway and why would a normal person expect to have one? A tailor's clothes get worn out, a farmer's food is eaten, the cook's dish eaten, the hotel cleaner's "output" gets messy again, the architect's apartment block torn down etc. Who has a true legacy outside a small minority of philosophers, artists, scientists and political leaders?
qwerty456127 6y ago
I don't use Ikea furniture because I have to assemble it. It's just, cheap, reasonably good, easy to find and get. The idea of having to buy a non-Ikea desk scares me because I have no idea where to buy it (I'd have to spend time googling, analyzing and coping with uncertainty), I believe it's going to be expensive (which also implies I'll spend the rest of my life worrying about damaging its surface) and heavy. With Ikea I just go there and get whatever I need (+ an awesome Swedish dinner and best coffee ever).
- ky3 6y ago
  > I buy Ikea furniture not because I have to assemble it. I buy it because it's cheap, reasonably good, easy to find and get. Ftfy
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    Thank you. Obviously the comma after "just" wasn't meant to be there but replacing "use" with "buy" discarded a portion of the meaning. The article says people overrate value of what they build themselves and are more likely to keep using it for longer. I don't feel convinced this applies to most of the Ikea shopping cases - I believe the factors I've mentioned might play more significant roles. I also doubt many people would prefer to spend time tweaking an app in a hypothetical scenario in which they could actually get it pre-configured in perfect accordance with their needs and tastes.
- jjn2009 6y ago
  Might be more applicable in this scenario to the act of throwing out your furniture?
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    Perhaps, but not my case anyway - I would never throw away anything which is not actual garbage anyway. Whenever I feel like replacing something I do my best to find somebody who wants it, no matter how long it takes and how little they pay.
- 6y ago
cjohansson 6y ago
Great piece, I think human satisfaction should be the most important metric when measuring products. The article implies somewhat it’s not. Also I think product which engages you and make you feel you learned something adds value, but only if you overcome the challenges (IKEA, Emacs)
- distalx 6y ago
  >I think product which engages you and make you feel you learned something adds value, but only if you overcome the challenges (IKEA, Emacs) Do you think that "personality type" could be also a factor here?
- stareatgoats 6y ago
  Now all vendors have to do is to add a work component to their products and customer churn will cease. The only(?) caveat here is probably that if customers realize that their required work was added to the product for the sole purpose of customer retention then this scheme will surely backfire. (Congrats btw for being close to the only comment that actually addresses the gist of the article and not just the title. Had to scroll to the bottom, but here you are :-) People are surely stressed nowadays. Could it be because that Ikea bookshelf isn't up yet?)

120 points by maguay 6y ago

> We may have complained for decades when software locked us in; now, we’re happy to stay. Being willing to trade-off higher costs and less control in order to use new technology is commonplace in consumer tech. Nobody has ever been "happy" about this vendor lock-in, why would no-code be any different? The current proprietary tools are valuable but they don't allow users to export their creations between vendors offering the same functionality - that means they are more locked-in then ever. Users have the added emotional element of having to abandon their creation and accept the sunk-cost if they want to switch. I'm quite sure that nobody is happy about that fact.

yowlingcat 6y ago
> I'm quite sure that nobody is happy about that fact. Indeed. I think the original post may have mistaken effect for cause. We can look across the course of human history at many cases of authority figures and those who interact with them, but generally, forcing any kind of lock-in has weird second order effects, and sometimes "the cure is worse than the ailment" -- so too I think it could be here. What would be needed to show this? Portability, for one. The open-core model exists for a reason. Software lock-in needs to be voluntary to be defendable. If you don't make it easy for your users to switch, you have no proof that they are staying with you because you are the best option, not just what they are forced to use. This can be very dangerous for an organization which takes its incumbence for granted, which is basically every large B2B sales-led SaaS org, almost by default. It means that when an upstart figures out how to out-execute you, you will have ossified into a living fossil whose organs they will consume from the inside out all in one go, rather than getting advanced notice ahead of time while you can still course correct. Convenience is great and all, but on a long enough corporate lifecycle/lifespan (and they seem to be getting shorter and shorter these days), un-sustainability eventually takes its toll.
- ozim 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_portability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_portability There is data portability in EU and you can get all your data... But it probably is useless or at least not as useful as in context of the SaaS you were using.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    There's a legal requirement for data portability. That's a different thing.

wintorez 6y ago

I've come to the conclusion that code is temporary, and is meant to be discarded after a while. Hardware change, requirements change, people change. The things that are permanent are data and methods. That's why I think as long as you have documented and defined your methods (i.e. business logic) well, and your data is portable, you shouldn't worry much about vendor lock-in in the long run.

Edmond 6y ago
Agreed. The primary reason the software development field has evolved to be preoccupied with saving/re-using/inter-op code is because of the difficulty of building even the most trivial piece of software. Unfortunately code hoarding is simply a reflection of the age-old human flaw of wanting to recoup sunk cost, you assume if you've invested a lot of time into something, it must be worth holding on to for as long as possible :) If software was as easy to make as a piece of office stationary is easy to write on, no one would care about code reuse/saving/interop...you don't see anyone saving post-it notes or even excel docs for indefinite reuse.
- wintorez 6y ago
  I couldn't agree more. A personal anecdote; I used to think about what would be my legacy as software developer? Anything that I write would be obsolete in few years. Nothing I wrote back then remained working. This thought was depressing me. Then I realized that what I'm actually creating and maintaining is not code. It's the mindset behind the code, and the skillset to convert ideas to working pieces of software. My legacy would be to learn through experimenting, and to help others learn the same.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Who has a legacy anyway and why would a normal person expect to have one? A tailor's clothes get worn out, a farmer's food is eaten, the cook's dish eaten, the hotel cleaner's "output" gets messy again, the architect's apartment block torn down etc. Who has a true legacy outside a small minority of philosophers, artists, scientists and political leaders?

qwerty456127 6y ago

I don't use Ikea furniture because I have to assemble it. It's just, cheap, reasonably good, easy to find and get. The idea of having to buy a non-Ikea desk scares me because I have no idea where to buy it (I'd have to spend time googling, analyzing and coping with uncertainty), I believe it's going to be expensive (which also implies I'll spend the rest of my life worrying about damaging its surface) and heavy. With Ikea I just go there and get whatever I need (+ an awesome Swedish dinner and best coffee ever).

ky3 6y ago
> I buy Ikea furniture not because I have to assemble it. I buy it because it's cheap, reasonably good, easy to find and get. Ftfy
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  Thank you. Obviously the comma after "just" wasn't meant to be there but replacing "use" with "buy" discarded a portion of the meaning. The article says people overrate value of what they build themselves and are more likely to keep using it for longer. I don't feel convinced this applies to most of the Ikea shopping cases - I believe the factors I've mentioned might play more significant roles. I also doubt many people would prefer to spend time tweaking an app in a hypothetical scenario in which they could actually get it pre-configured in perfect accordance with their needs and tastes.
jjn2009 6y ago
Might be more applicable in this scenario to the act of throwing out your furniture?
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  Perhaps, but not my case anyway - I would never throw away anything which is not actual garbage anyway. Whenever I feel like replacing something I do my best to find somebody who wants it, no matter how long it takes and how little they pay.
6y ago

cjohansson 6y ago

Great piece, I think human satisfaction should be the most important metric when measuring products. The article implies somewhat it’s not. Also I think product which engages you and make you feel you learned something adds value, but only if you overcome the challenges (IKEA, Emacs)

distalx 6y ago
>I think product which engages you and make you feel you learned something adds value, but only if you overcome the challenges (IKEA, Emacs) Do you think that "personality type" could be also a factor here?
stareatgoats 6y ago
Now all vendors have to do is to add a work component to their products and customer churn will cease. The only(?) caveat here is probably that if customers realize that their required work was added to the product for the sole purpose of customer retention then this scheme will surely backfire. (Congrats btw for being close to the only comment that actually addresses the gist of the article and not just the title. Had to scroll to the bottom, but here you are :-) People are surely stressed nowadays. Could it be because that Ikea bookshelf isn't up yet?)