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I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. Nothing you can do but work around them sadly.

onion2k 5y ago
I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML page that explains why their system isn't working for you.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  The engineers at Google Play really have got to feel embarrassed at how bad this situation has been over the years. How could they have a conversation with an Android developer that's had to deal with the lack of support?
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I see this and think of all the millions of apps that the code controls. I don't know how many do fail validation, but it's clearly not a vast number, definitely under 1%. Given that they're also clearly training a model for this, based on a large number of inputs and rules, then this is pretty good. Their end goal is clearly to be able to remove humans from this process completely. Which is good - it's shitty work. From my point of view as an app customer, this is fine. I don't see apps that fail validation, and there are too many (shitty) apps anyway - more validation is good. From my point of view as an entrepreneur, I approve. Clearly they can live with a certain level of false negatives, and that makes sense from a business point of view as they save so much in the validation process. From my point of view as a developer, however, it's a dumpster fire and I'm not going anywhere near it.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    I don't see apps that fail validation, and there are too many (shitty) apps anyway - more validation is good. You've failed to understand your own problem. You're seeing lots of shitty apps. That means the validation isn't working because part of the validation process is supposed to make sure apps are of sufficient quality. So no, you don't see apps that fail validation, you see apps that should have failed validation. That's worse, especially when the same validation is apparently rejecting good apps.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      I don't see all the apps that applied. I just see the apps that passed validation. It's totally reasonable to assume that the apps that were rejected by the validation process are worse than the apps that were accepted.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    > From my point of view as an entrepreneur, I approve. Sorry, I don't believe you here. If you were trying to get, say, a loan from the bank you've done business with for years but would only ever get vague replies and could never speak with a human, you'd be rightfully angry. There's nothing special about being an "entrepreneur" that makes this less problematic.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      Devs aren't the customer here. I work in a fintech and deal with banks all the time. We only ever get vague replies, and while we do speak to humans, they're not as helpful as you'd think. I'm rightfully angry. But there's nothing we can do because we're not the customer - we need to do business with them, we can't walk away, so we've got very little leverage.
- justin_oaks 5y ago
  I find it interesting that people blame the engineers when they're the bottom of the hierarchy. It's their bosses that prioritize their work, decide whether their work is good enough, and decide whether to fix something that's broken. It's not the individual engineers who decide whether the company will have a culture of helping users and/or app developers, or treating them like resources to exploit. It's not the individual engineers who choose to have no humans involved in the app review process. Some engineers are incompetent, yes, but it's the bosses who keep the incompetent folks working at the company instead of finding better people.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    Engineers at Google can get a job anywhere. They choose to work for Google despite building and maintaining a substandard product. Google engineers have a lot of leverage. I refuse to pretend that they can't influence product quality.
    - thinkingemote 5y ago
      Google and other trendy tech companies have a concept called Human Ops. Human ops is designed to improve and keep safe the mental health of its engineers. They do this by using machines to do all the dirty stuff as possible. Classic example is evil image flagging problems causing genuine psychological trauma, but it's extended now to everything engineers hate like drudge work, customer support etc. You'd need to convince the engineers that Human Ops is wrong first. Engineers like the shield and the corporation likes the cost cut.
      - notreallyserio 5y ago
        They're choosing to use machines to maintain their mental health by creating a product that impacts the mental health of their customers who get to deal with their revenue streams being cut off entirely, arbitrarily, often with no know reason or recourse. This argument makes the engineers look monstrous, not just mildly shitty.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago

onion2k 5y ago

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML page that explains why their system isn't working for you.

notreallyserio 5y ago
The engineers at Google Play really have got to feel embarrassed at how bad this situation has been over the years. How could they have a conversation with an Android developer that's had to deal with the lack of support?
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I see this and think of all the millions of apps that the code controls. I don't know how many do fail validation, but it's clearly not a vast number, definitely under 1%. Given that they're also clearly training a model for this, based on a large number of inputs and rules, then this is pretty good. Their end goal is clearly to be able to remove humans from this process completely. Which is good - it's shitty work. From my point of view as an app customer, this is fine. I don't see apps that fail validation, and there are too many (shitty) apps anyway - more validation is good. From my point of view as an entrepreneur, I approve. Clearly they can live with a certain level of false negatives, and that makes sense from a business point of view as they save so much in the validation process. From my point of view as a developer, however, it's a dumpster fire and I'm not going anywhere near it.
- onion2k 5y ago
  I don't see apps that fail validation, and there are too many (shitty) apps anyway - more validation is good. You've failed to understand your own problem. You're seeing lots of shitty apps. That means the validation isn't working because part of the validation process is supposed to make sure apps are of sufficient quality. So no, you don't see apps that fail validation, you see apps that should have failed validation. That's worse, especially when the same validation is apparently rejecting good apps.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    I don't see all the apps that applied. I just see the apps that passed validation. It's totally reasonable to assume that the apps that were rejected by the validation process are worse than the apps that were accepted.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  > From my point of view as an entrepreneur, I approve. Sorry, I don't believe you here. If you were trying to get, say, a loan from the bank you've done business with for years but would only ever get vague replies and could never speak with a human, you'd be rightfully angry. There's nothing special about being an "entrepreneur" that makes this less problematic.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    Devs aren't the customer here. I work in a fintech and deal with banks all the time. We only ever get vague replies, and while we do speak to humans, they're not as helpful as you'd think. I'm rightfully angry. But there's nothing we can do because we're not the customer - we need to do business with them, we can't walk away, so we've got very little leverage.
justin_oaks 5y ago
I find it interesting that people blame the engineers when they're the bottom of the hierarchy. It's their bosses that prioritize their work, decide whether their work is good enough, and decide whether to fix something that's broken. It's not the individual engineers who decide whether the company will have a culture of helping users and/or app developers, or treating them like resources to exploit. It's not the individual engineers who choose to have no humans involved in the app review process. Some engineers are incompetent, yes, but it's the bosses who keep the incompetent folks working at the company instead of finding better people.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  Engineers at Google can get a job anywhere. They choose to work for Google despite building and maintaining a substandard product. Google engineers have a lot of leverage. I refuse to pretend that they can't influence product quality.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    Google and other trendy tech companies have a concept called Human Ops. Human ops is designed to improve and keep safe the mental health of its engineers. They do this by using machines to do all the dirty stuff as possible. Classic example is evil image flagging problems causing genuine psychological trauma, but it's extended now to everything engineers hate like drudge work, customer support etc. You'd need to convince the engineers that Human Ops is wrong first. Engineers like the shield and the corporation likes the cost cut.
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      They're choosing to use machines to maintain their mental health by creating a product that impacts the mental health of their customers who get to deal with their revenue streams being cut off entirely, arbitrarily, often with no know reason or recourse. This argument makes the engineers look monstrous, not just mildly shitty.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago