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I can mainly think of companies and projects from my professional experience, and it wouldn't be my place to publicly speak about these things. But I believe th

by clnq 4y ago

I can mainly think of companies and projects from my professional experience, and it wouldn't be my place to publicly speak about these things. But I believe that many engineers like me have worked on death march projects where their critical problems have been brought up with management and thoroughly ignored. Still, to try and give you some examples, Google Glass was known to be a failed product early on due to technical and practical problems voiced by engineers. But there was a culture of optimism or wilful ignorance at Google about Glass, so the project continued until it died due to these problems. And there are some articles on Hacker News about it. Right now there are murmurs online that Meta engineers are very aware that the metaverse is not engaging and VR efforts should pivot elsewhere. Yet the management seems to ignore this, even at tremendous cost to the company value. The whole VR effort at Meta could die because of this. The interesting aspect of this culture is that it's not a "hindsight is 20-20" situation. In complete contrast, it's that engineers bring up problems that will significantly harm a project or a company in the future, but are ignored.

toast0 4y ago
I mean, Google Glass was crap and they did some dumb things there, but because they had a limited release, most people don't know how unusable it was, and it probably increases their cool high-tech image. Although, maybe it increases their out-of-touch image too (especially in the glasshole phase); but it doesn't contribute to killed by google, really. Also, Google Watch is basically Google Glass on a wrist, so building it out wasn't a complete waste.
dataflow 4y ago
As of a few years ago I believe Google Glass was actually put to good use, by medical scribes. Not sure if that had changed or not. It seemed like the focus on consumers was the part that failed, not the technology. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/google-glass-powered-medical-scribe-service-going-public-as-part-spac-deal https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/google-glass-powered-m...
- clnq 4y ago
  That's a great counter-point. Still, I believe that the "moonshot" Google Glass project could have succeeded as well if they listened to internal feedback earlier.
markwkw 4y ago
Metaverse being “not-engaging” is not an engineering type of observation, rather some kind of psychology/marketing type of insight. I wouldn’t trust engineers telling me something is, or is not going to be engaging to the general public.
- clnq 4y ago
  In my experience, this is one of the ways that valid problems are dismissed. Engineers (and people in other disciplines) dogfooding and building the product should be listened to when they bring up these issues. They have T-shaped skills and an understanding of how the software works, as well as whether it can meet consumer expectations. There should not be gatekeeping about who can have insights into the product and who can't. I think that you hit the nail on the head with the word "trust" - in many companies there should be more trust from management that engineers understand the context within which they work, and could have very unique and valid insights into how their software and hardware will be received by the consumer.

by clnq 4y ago

toast0 4y ago

I mean, Google Glass was crap and they did some dumb things there, but because they had a limited release, most people don't know how unusable it was, and it probably increases their cool high-tech image. Although, maybe it increases their out-of-touch image too (especially in the glasshole phase); but it doesn't contribute to killed by google, really. Also, Google Watch is basically Google Glass on a wrist, so building it out wasn't a complete waste.

dataflow 4y ago

As of a few years ago I believe Google Glass was actually put to good use, by medical scribes. Not sure if that had changed or not. It seemed like the focus on consumers was the part that failed, not the technology. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/google-glass-powered-medical-scribe-service-going-public-as-part-spac-deal https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/google-glass-powered-m...

clnq 4y ago
That's a great counter-point. Still, I believe that the "moonshot" Google Glass project could have succeeded as well if they listened to internal feedback earlier.

markwkw 4y ago

Metaverse being “not-engaging” is not an engineering type of observation, rather some kind of psychology/marketing type of insight. I wouldn’t trust engineers telling me something is, or is not going to be engaging to the general public.

clnq 4y ago
In my experience, this is one of the ways that valid problems are dismissed. Engineers (and people in other disciplines) dogfooding and building the product should be listened to when they bring up these issues. They have T-shaped skills and an understanding of how the software works, as well as whether it can meet consumer expectations. There should not be gatekeeping about who can have insights into the product and who can't. I think that you hit the nail on the head with the word "trust" - in many companies there should be more trust from management that engineers understand the context within which they work, and could have very unique and valid insights into how their software and hardware will be received by the consumer.