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It is always wild to see the ways in a business that could have been sustainable for decades can suddenly implode because they get far to ambitious. Alas there

It is always wild to see the ways in a business that could have been sustainable for decades can suddenly implode because they get far to ambitious. Alas there is the Japanese saying "A thousand years of good will can be ruined in a single hour". Even if they change the CEO, it will take years of good moves and good will to regain what they have lost so quickly.

solardev 2y ago
Exactly :( The sad thing is, I don't even know what they were trying to be ambitious about. It's not like they were launching some risky new product segment, or changing their brand in some major way... it was just a boring infrastructure update for their app. It launched with fewer features, less support, and a million bugs – but it didn't have to. Done right, customers never even needed to know about it. It could've just been a gradual phased rollout, with beta users (which they already have) first, then 2%, then 15%, etc., while the old software continued to work. Or they could've switched endpoints one product line at a time. Or they could've simply allowed the old and new apps to coexist in the app store for a few months to make sure all the kinks were worked out. It's not like this is world-changing stuff. It's just a software update, the kind that we all do every day. Worst case, even if they absolutely HAD to launch like this, they should've listened to customers and reversed course (rolling back to the old app) after the backlash. It's just unfathomable hubris, combining a rushed rollout with unreasonable stubbornness in turning it back. That's the sort of process failure that falls squarely on leadership, not the employees.
dann0 2y ago
It's really not suddenly. They keep making the same mistakes. This is the second or third time the app has changed and they've got it wrong. I have to use two apps to control my Sonos equipment because one of my old units is too old even though it works and sounds great. They tried to not support old stuff, they tried to make the hardware not work if sold, and they have messed up the app several times. I want to love them, but it's hard to when you investment could just stop working at any moment.

solardev 2y ago

Exactly :( The sad thing is, I don't even know what they were trying to be ambitious about. It's not like they were launching some risky new product segment, or changing their brand in some major way... it was just a boring infrastructure update for their app. It launched with fewer features, less support, and a million bugs – but it didn't have to. Done right, customers never even needed to know about it. It could've just been a gradual phased rollout, with beta users (which they already have) first, then 2%, then 15%, etc., while the old software continued to work. Or they could've switched endpoints one product line at a time. Or they could've simply allowed the old and new apps to coexist in the app store for a few months to make sure all the kinks were worked out. It's not like this is world-changing stuff. It's just a software update, the kind that we all do every day. Worst case, even if they absolutely HAD to launch like this, they should've listened to customers and reversed course (rolling back to the old app) after the backlash. It's just unfathomable hubris, combining a rushed rollout with unreasonable stubbornness in turning it back. That's the sort of process failure that falls squarely on leadership, not the employees.

dann0 2y ago

It's really not suddenly. They keep making the same mistakes. This is the second or third time the app has changed and they've got it wrong. I have to use two apps to control my Sonos equipment because one of my old units is too old even though it works and sounds great. They tried to not support old stuff, they tried to make the hardware not work if sold, and they have messed up the app several times. I want to love them, but it's hard to when you investment could just stop working at any moment.