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The author says that he's not a product manager and doesn't have a particular insight. As a PM, I can share how I think: The main question is "does it matter?"

The author says that he's not a product manager and doesn't have a particular insight. As a PM, I can share how I think: The main question is "does it matter?" The answer depends case by case. For example, if I am the PM for TurboTax Premier desktop software, I know that it's latent - but it probably doesn't matter in a way that deserves prioritization. Sure, my clients would like for the forms to load faster, but they care infinitely more about the scope of tax situations we cover, and the correctness of calculation. A person uses my product a few hours per year, so even if there's an accumulated minute of form refresh latency, it's just not that impactful. What that means is - if I have an "extra developer", I am going to direct them towards product scope and correctness, not latency. On the other hand, something like VSCODE (an example the article mentions), speed is part of the value proposition. As a developer, I need to quickly change text, quickly look up a reference, quickly switch files, etc. If things are sluggish, it isn't just frustrating but limits my ability to do development work. So a user of a slow IDE would be very motivated to seek alternatives, since they basically live in the IDE. As a PM, I would absolutely invest in performance if it was making my product actually less useful. It's like anything else, investment has a tradeoff. Chances are, whatever car you drive could have a faster 0-60 speed and in isolation, that would be great. But are you willing to pay 10x for the car? Are you willing to give up the seats and the trunk to make it happen? So your car may not have the best 0-60, but if it's an affordable family minivan that's probably the right call.

somebody78978 4y ago
Regarding TurboTax, I'm pretty sure the clients want the software to work slower; there are times when the software just pauses and says something like "Checking over to make sure we found all deductions", even though obviously all of that work has already been done.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I was actually thinking about that case - does the slowness "suggest" that the software is really thinking deeply and working hard for me. I do think you have a good point.
  - adamckay 4y ago
    It does indeed. Here's an article that discusses it more [1]. I know of a few thins that introduce an artificial wait with a progress bar to make the user feel like it's doing something complex. There's also situations in the real world too, coin counting machines apparently also delay showing the results because people won't believe that dumping a jar full of coins into a machine and having an instant answer can be accurate. People also do it too, locksmiths may umm and ah when called out to pick a lock because if they do it too quickly customers can feel aggrieved at a large invoice or even feel less safe in their homes if they've seen their front door picked in 10 seconds. 1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-s...
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      The third example (locksmiths) I get, they're making a little show to avoid a difficult conversation with some customers[0]. A bit scummy, but then again, plenty of customers are no saints themselves. However, the first two examples feel like self-fulfilling prophesies to me. Normal people have no reference point to judge how fast or slow software and hardware should be, other than through direct experience. By adding fake delays to avoid being honest and perhaps reassuring occasional surprised users, vendors just screw with the mental frameworks people build, at scale. It's a wasted opportunity, too, because if you're brave enough to be honest about execution time and weather the initial wave of distrust, then you may become a new reference point for your users, who will now view your competitors' software as bloated. -- [0] - Though recently I brought this story up with a locksmith, and he said he thinks it's just stupid and there are hardly any situations in which it would even make sense.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I think the locksmith thing comes from a couple of things: 1. Some disreputable locksmiths (word gets around) - probably very few 2. A locksmith will try the fast methods first, if they work he wins, if they don’t he didn’t waste too much time. 3. After doing a lock once he could immediately redo the same lock much faster and this may make it look like he could have done it very fast to begin
tshaddox 4y ago
The tax software situation you're describing sounds totally reasonable, but it does seem indicative of a shortcoming in the market. Like, is there really a fundamental reason why the same feature set couldn't possibly be developed while also being faster for customers and not requiring more developer resources per feature? In some cases I could see that being the case: if the core task fundamentally requires significant computing resources and margins are too thin to through more resources at it while remaining competitive. That's the "every grocery store has one cashier with a long line" story (except for stores that change the story, e.g. with self checkout or a pricing strategy that frees up some margin to spend on more staff). I wonder how much of the slow performance of tax software is attributable to this, and how much is attributable simply to accumulated bloat or other things that might fall under the vague label "technical debt." But it's also clear that there are technical decisions that can make the software slower for customers without making feature development easier or cheaper or faster.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  // and how much is attributable simply to accumulated bloat or other things that might fall under the vague label "technical debt." (I am the person you're responding to) - I do think that very often it indeed falls into the vague label of "tech debt" but not all debt needs to be repaid. For example - let's say I am writing a new Turbo Tax feature and I can do it quickly by leveraging 4 existing APIs. My feature is "slow" because each API does its own complex IO operations, many of which are redundant across the 4 calls. Is that technical debt? I have the opportunity to create a new API that optimizes the IO for my use case, and it would be 4x faster. But, it may never be "worth it" to do that because my feature is seldomly used and is still fast enough for the user to not lose productivity. So I would say that's not really a tech debt, just a technical tradeoff that was made. In general, I find that a lot of latency comes from (a) reuse of suboptimal pieces/frameworks that accelerate development and (b) not taking the time to optimize. There are times when these are tech debt, and there are times when these are fine.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > Is that technical debt? ... So I would say that's not really a tech debt, just a technical tradeoff that was made. Well, I'd still call that technical debt. All debt is a tradeoff, and sometimes debt is worth it (or, at least, is judged to be worth it at the time the debt is taken on). In this case, it might be deemed worth it, and reasonably so, especially if there simply aren't enough competitors that this would make a difference at the margin, or if it's simply not feasible for any competitor to implement that same feature in the same time frame with the same amount of developer resources and make it perform faster.
9erdelta 4y ago
Anecdotally, I stopped using TurboTax (after using it for 8 years) for 2 reasons. I was never confident that my tax situation was being handled correctly. The UI is noisy, the explanations don't explain. So I would buy audit insurance just in case. The second reason, it was slow and navigating between pages and sections was annoying. So now I pay a real person to do my taxes. It takes a quarter of the time, costs about the same as TurboTax + audit insurance, and now I now longer stress about taxes.
- astrange 4y ago
  If you're not self-employed there's like a 0% chance you're getting your taxes wrong by holding TurboTax wrong. If you're FAANG there is some chance you're overpaying by not doing the RSU cost basis properly.
  - lkbm 4y ago
    I imported Coinbase Pro transactions and they all got counted as short-term gains because they'd been moved from Coinbase to Coinbase Pro within the past year, despite having been purchased several years prior. Now, you can definitely make the case that this is mostly Coinbase's fault for not sending over the actual purchase date, but TurboTax charged me a bunch of money to do that import, so I feel like they should have done some basic quality control. I don't trust TurboTax to get my taxes right, because last year they got it very, very wrong.
    - astrange 4y ago
      But that's an example of you overpaying - no need for audit insurance if you're making mistakes in their favor. I don't think it does wash sales across different brokers properly though, but neither does anyone else.
      - lkbm 4y ago
        Oh, I definitely don't worry about audit insurance, and operate on the assumption that the IRS will be non-antagonistic towards me if I make a mistake. I want to pay the correct amount in taxes, and the IRS wants me to pay the correct amount in taxes. We're on the same side, and my understanding is that they'll act as if we're on the same side unless there's clear reason to believe otherwise. What I'm objecting to is the idea that I'm not going to get my taxes wrong using TurboTax. They fucked up badly. I'm certainly not arguing that the solution is to buy audit insurance from the same company that told me to overpay by several thousand dollars. Every penny I pay to Intuit is a moral failing on my part, and on the part of the legislature that succumbed to their lobbying.
cratermoon 4y ago
> A person uses my product a few hours per year I gather from this comment that the software is only used by individuals filing their own returns, not by professional tax-preparers or accountants. The latter two certainly spend more than a "a few hours per year" in whatever product they use for preparation. When it's tax season and they have to get the work done by April 15, professional aren't going to tolerate a few more minutes per customer.

somebody78978 4y ago

Regarding TurboTax, I'm pretty sure the clients want the software to work slower; there are times when the software just pauses and says something like "Checking over to make sure we found all deductions", even though obviously all of that work has already been done.

xyzelement 4y ago
I was actually thinking about that case - does the slowness "suggest" that the software is really thinking deeply and working hard for me. I do think you have a good point.
- adamckay 4y ago
  It does indeed. Here's an article that discusses it more [1]. I know of a few thins that introduce an artificial wait with a progress bar to make the user feel like it's doing something complex. There's also situations in the real world too, coin counting machines apparently also delay showing the results because people won't believe that dumping a jar full of coins into a machine and having an instant answer can be accurate. People also do it too, locksmiths may umm and ah when called out to pick a lock because if they do it too quickly customers can feel aggrieved at a large invoice or even feel less safe in their homes if they've seen their front door picked in 10 seconds. 1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-s...
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    The third example (locksmiths) I get, they're making a little show to avoid a difficult conversation with some customers[0]. A bit scummy, but then again, plenty of customers are no saints themselves. However, the first two examples feel like self-fulfilling prophesies to me. Normal people have no reference point to judge how fast or slow software and hardware should be, other than through direct experience. By adding fake delays to avoid being honest and perhaps reassuring occasional surprised users, vendors just screw with the mental frameworks people build, at scale. It's a wasted opportunity, too, because if you're brave enough to be honest about execution time and weather the initial wave of distrust, then you may become a new reference point for your users, who will now view your competitors' software as bloated. -- [0] - Though recently I brought this story up with a locksmith, and he said he thinks it's just stupid and there are hardly any situations in which it would even make sense.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I think the locksmith thing comes from a couple of things: 1. Some disreputable locksmiths (word gets around) - probably very few 2. A locksmith will try the fast methods first, if they work he wins, if they don’t he didn’t waste too much time. 3. After doing a lock once he could immediately redo the same lock much faster and this may make it look like he could have done it very fast to begin

tshaddox 4y ago

The tax software situation you're describing sounds totally reasonable, but it does seem indicative of a shortcoming in the market. Like, is there really a fundamental reason why the same feature set couldn't possibly be developed while also being faster for customers and not requiring more developer resources per feature? In some cases I could see that being the case: if the core task fundamentally requires significant computing resources and margins are too thin to through more resources at it while remaining competitive. That's the "every grocery store has one cashier with a long line" story (except for stores that change the story, e.g. with self checkout or a pricing strategy that frees up some margin to spend on more staff). I wonder how much of the slow performance of tax software is attributable to this, and how much is attributable simply to accumulated bloat or other things that might fall under the vague label "technical debt." But it's also clear that there are technical decisions that can make the software slower for customers without making feature development easier or cheaper or faster.

xyzelement 4y ago
// and how much is attributable simply to accumulated bloat or other things that might fall under the vague label "technical debt." (I am the person you're responding to) - I do think that very often it indeed falls into the vague label of "tech debt" but not all debt needs to be repaid. For example - let's say I am writing a new Turbo Tax feature and I can do it quickly by leveraging 4 existing APIs. My feature is "slow" because each API does its own complex IO operations, many of which are redundant across the 4 calls. Is that technical debt? I have the opportunity to create a new API that optimizes the IO for my use case, and it would be 4x faster. But, it may never be "worth it" to do that because my feature is seldomly used and is still fast enough for the user to not lose productivity. So I would say that's not really a tech debt, just a technical tradeoff that was made. In general, I find that a lot of latency comes from (a) reuse of suboptimal pieces/frameworks that accelerate development and (b) not taking the time to optimize. There are times when these are tech debt, and there are times when these are fine.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > Is that technical debt? ... So I would say that's not really a tech debt, just a technical tradeoff that was made. Well, I'd still call that technical debt. All debt is a tradeoff, and sometimes debt is worth it (or, at least, is judged to be worth it at the time the debt is taken on). In this case, it might be deemed worth it, and reasonably so, especially if there simply aren't enough competitors that this would make a difference at the margin, or if it's simply not feasible for any competitor to implement that same feature in the same time frame with the same amount of developer resources and make it perform faster.

9erdelta 4y ago

Anecdotally, I stopped using TurboTax (after using it for 8 years) for 2 reasons. I was never confident that my tax situation was being handled correctly. The UI is noisy, the explanations don't explain. So I would buy audit insurance just in case. The second reason, it was slow and navigating between pages and sections was annoying. So now I pay a real person to do my taxes. It takes a quarter of the time, costs about the same as TurboTax + audit insurance, and now I now longer stress about taxes.

astrange 4y ago
If you're not self-employed there's like a 0% chance you're getting your taxes wrong by holding TurboTax wrong. If you're FAANG there is some chance you're overpaying by not doing the RSU cost basis properly.
- lkbm 4y ago
  I imported Coinbase Pro transactions and they all got counted as short-term gains because they'd been moved from Coinbase to Coinbase Pro within the past year, despite having been purchased several years prior. Now, you can definitely make the case that this is mostly Coinbase's fault for not sending over the actual purchase date, but TurboTax charged me a bunch of money to do that import, so I feel like they should have done some basic quality control. I don't trust TurboTax to get my taxes right, because last year they got it very, very wrong.
  - astrange 4y ago
    But that's an example of you overpaying - no need for audit insurance if you're making mistakes in their favor. I don't think it does wash sales across different brokers properly though, but neither does anyone else.
    - lkbm 4y ago
      Oh, I definitely don't worry about audit insurance, and operate on the assumption that the IRS will be non-antagonistic towards me if I make a mistake. I want to pay the correct amount in taxes, and the IRS wants me to pay the correct amount in taxes. We're on the same side, and my understanding is that they'll act as if we're on the same side unless there's clear reason to believe otherwise. What I'm objecting to is the idea that I'm not going to get my taxes wrong using TurboTax. They fucked up badly. I'm certainly not arguing that the solution is to buy audit insurance from the same company that told me to overpay by several thousand dollars. Every penny I pay to Intuit is a moral failing on my part, and on the part of the legislature that succumbed to their lobbying.

cratermoon 4y ago

> A person uses my product a few hours per year I gather from this comment that the software is only used by individuals filing their own returns, not by professional tax-preparers or accountants. The latter two certainly spend more than a "a few hours per year" in whatever product they use for preparation. When it's tax season and they have to get the work done by April 15, professional aren't going to tolerate a few more minutes per customer.