8 ms·

> Replace "youtube videos" with whatever the company is trying to achieve. Some counterpoints: - Xerox knowingly didn't fix the problematic gear trains to gua

> Replace "youtube videos" with whatever the company is trying to achieve. Some counterpoints: - Xerox knowingly didn't fix the problematic gear trains to guarantee periodic part changes, prioritizing money over "best copier possible". - Ford didn't fix Pinto's fuel tank, prioritizing cost minimization over "best possible car in its class". - Microsoft is did tons of shady things in its OS development history to prioritize domination over "best OS possible", sometimes actively degrading the good features and parts of its OS. - Dyson's some batteries are notorious for killing themselves via firmware on slight cell imbalance instead of doing self-balancing. Dyson prioritize "steady income via killing good parts early" instead of "building the best vacuum possible". - Many more electronic and electromechanical systems are engineered with short lives to prioritize "minimizing costs and maximizing profit" over "building the best X possible". - Lastly, Boeing's doing all kinds of shady stuff (MCAS, doors, build quality, etc.) since they prioritize "maximize shareholder value" over "building the best planes possible". - ...and there's Intel, but I think the idea is clear here.

willvarfar 2y ago
Their definition of "best copier possible" was "most-profitable copier possible", meaning they had to balance getting people to not hate it so much they chose competitors, while not being so reliable it didn't need warrantees and services and parts etc?
- bayindirh 2y ago
  > not being so reliable it didn't need warrantees[sic] and services and parts etc? The thing is, nothing is completely maintenance free, esp. if there's something mechanical. Make wearing parts wear, core parts robust. All my laser printers were Samsung/Xerox (hah), and their "core" is made like a tank. Only its rollers, toner and imaging/drum kits wear down, and these are already consumables. The device keeps track the life of every of these replaceable components, and you replace them you hit these marks, because they're already worn down to hinder reliable operation (Imager dies at 9K pages, rollers at 20K pages IIRC). You don't need to make things fail prematurely to make something profitable. First one of these printers didn't have replaceable rollers, so I had to donate it after 11 years of operation. This one is almost 8 years old IIRC, and it's still going strong. I'll be using it as long as I can find spares for it, because it's engineered "correctly", not "for profit". Meantime, its manufacturer can still profit from parts, toner and imaging units.
  - willvarfar 2y ago
    Not copiers, but the ice cream machines in mcdonalds resturants were kept unreliable because mcdonalds made money on the constant repairs. It didn't matter to them that the franchisee was losing money. When 3rd party companies jumped in to fix the machines the manufacturer and mcdonalds acted to stop that happening. There was a court case brought by the third party companies, which they recently lost.
    - bornfreddy 2y ago
      > ...they recently lost. Who is "they"?
      - chongli 2y ago
        They being the third party repair companies. Johnny Harris did a long piece on the whole story [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
    - kchr 2y ago
      Actually, it looks like the feds have sided with the 3rd parties? https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/14/24101023/ftc-doj-comment-dmca-ifixit-ice-cream-machines https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/14/24101023/ftc-doj-comment-...
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    Why did you write sic after you quoted “warrantees”?
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      The correct spelling is "warranties" (since singular y becomes i when it gets plural). [sic] means "I copied the word as written in its original, and it was already written that way" [0]. [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sic
IanCal 2y ago
Those are problematic business goals, right? I think that's very different to aligning team goals to company goals.
richardw 2y ago
Those still seem like examples of “whatever the company is trying to achieve”, be it profitability, domination, cost minimisation etc.
folken 2y ago
I think this is exactly the point that MrBeast is trying to make. By being best YOUTUBE videos it means to focus on whatever appeals to the algorithm. It doesn't mean you are better informed, or better entertained, as long as the click-through-rate is great and the minutes people watch the video is maximized. You could say the same thing is true for Xerox, for them the best doesn't necessary mean that they sell you the best most reliable copier, but the highest grossing product, with a guaranteed post-sale income. And this is why we can't have nice things.
- duxup 2y ago
  There was a blog post linked on HN a while ago, it was about their start up they ran many years ago. They got traction with clients and were a very "engineering focused" (or similar term) organization. Their code was rock solid. It was all going great, until suddenly some new company showed up and started taking their customers. Their new competitor's software was a mess with all sorts of incomplete or pure vaporware features.... but they did get features out fast. They got beat out by Salesforce... We as people pick the winners with our money, we don't really want nice things.
  - awuji 2y ago
    But most of the time, we as engineers don't pick the winners. Some C-Suite executive or middle manager, who isn't very technically inclined, picks the winners, and we as engineers are forced to make it work. As I don't think a engineer has ever had the chance to choose a company's CRM, the CRM with better marketing would always win over the CRM with better engineering.
    - NikolaNovak 2y ago
      Question I would pose is, why should engineer have the decision on a new CRM? They can provide input regarding e.g. maintainability, but majority of input would come from other stakeholders - users and business unit owning the customers whose relationship we want managed, ideally primarily. And it is somebodys job to take these inputs into collective whole. It was a mind blowing exercise to me 15 years ago when I was telling my boss how horrible our current installation of some ERP software was, and be asked me what's the user perspective. They log in every day, run financial reports they need, and log out. The system was great from their perspective! They had even less concern for my perspective of poor architecture and suboptimal implementation, than I (at that point) had of their perspective and goals. Thank krishna I didn't make the decisions on the CRM :-)
qwerty456127 2y ago
> - Dyson's some batteries are notorious for killing themselves via firmware on slight cell imbalance instead of doing self-balancing. Dyson prioritize "steady income via killing good parts early" instead of "building the best vacuum possible". Any good alternatives?
- bayindirh 2y ago
  If you really want a Dyson, a better firmware: https://github.com/tinfever/FU-Dyson-BMS https://github.com/tinfever/FU-Dyson-BMS If you are OK on alternatives, YouTube channel ProjectFarm has some vacuum reviews.
  - qwerty456127 2y ago
    Mine doesn't seem to have any problem with batteries. Just "airways blocked" error no matter what I do and the warranty/support service isn't very helpful. So I'm looking for a similar-or-better quality clone (cordless vacuum with the laser thing) but with better service.
- esaym 2y ago
  I went down the vacuum rabbit hole a few years ago. I decided on Sebo. These are more or less big ugly machines with a cord, but you can buy every part online no matter how small (screws, gaskets,etc) or big (motors, control boards, etc).
- itishappy 2y ago
  Riccar, Miele, SEBO. Brands you may not have heard of (I know I hadn't). Highly recommend a visit to your local vacuum repair store. Talk to the guy who's job is fixing all the shitty stick vacs.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Not to stan for Dyson, but they're not a vacuum-cleaner company, they're a fire-prevention company. Every decisionmaking process they undertake is going to have that at the top of the list. They don't want a lot of batteries in the field that are being stretched to the limits of their operating lives. Of course, the company's best response to that concern would be to make the batteries easily replaceable, including by third-party products. But that's where job #2 comes in: make sure the consumer has to buy a new Dyson sooner rather than later.
II2II 2y ago
I suspect the intent was the best for the customer. Like it or not, YouTube is the customer here. The viewers are YouTube's customers.
- Applejinx 2y ago
  I'd say the viewers are YouTube's quatloos. Advertisers and people seeking behavior modification out of populations are YouTube's customers. MrBeast understands this. The MrBeast goal is to get and stay #1 at whatever YouTube wants, for the purpose of being #1 at whatever YouTube wants. That purpose can be any number of things, MrBeast doesn't care. It's purpose-agnostic.
kogus 2y ago
You are not wrong, but I'd suggest that in those cases the company prioritized short and medium term profit over the long term success of the company. Each of the situations you list ended up costing those companies dearly (except maybe Dyson?), and today they serve as cautionary tales. So I think the original point of "keeping the main thing the main thing" stands.
throw0101a 2y ago
> Some counterpoints: The goal would be to be more customer-focused in those cases. "No one prospers without rendering benefit to others." — Tadao Yoshida, founder of YKK zippers, https://ykkamericas.com/our-philosophy/ https://ykkamericas.com/our-philosophy/ With MrBeast, the "best YOUTUBE video" would be one that causes engagement with the viewer throughout the video: > The creative process for every video they produce starts with the title and thumbnail. These set the expectations for the viewer, and everything that follows needs to be defined with those in mind. If a viewer feels their expectations are not being matched, they’ll click away - driving down the crucial Average View Duration that informs how much the video is promoted by YouTube’s all-important mystical algorithms. You have to both entice the viewer with the thumbnail/title, and meet the expectations of the viewer so they continue watching. Your counterexamples are a bunch of instances where the company did not meet customer expectations.
- someothherguyy 2y ago
  > No one prospers without rendering benefit to others Plenty of counterexamples for this as well. Snake oil salesmen, drug dealers, woo peddlers, gurus, politicians, grifters, scammers, thieves, and on and on...
- CooCooCaCha 2y ago
  I hate that so many people live by “wisdom” that falls apart at the slightest scrutiny…
  - borroka 2y ago
    Our lives are made up of and guided by narratives that sound good and just on paper, but are empirically proven wrong time and time again. Yet they persist. Some come from the zeitgeist, others are eternal, biblical, and worse, unfalsifiable: "everything happens for a reason," "if you're meant to be together, you will be together," "just do a good job and you'll get what you deserve". The latter was voiced by my postdoc advisor, who did not take the time to look at the percentage of researchers who did good work but did not get a tenure-track position. But perhaps those who did not find jobs did not do good enough work, and the charade continues.
mc32 2y ago
>- Ford didn't fix Pinto's fuel tank, prioritizing cost minimization over "best possible car in its class". This is a nit-pick, but for the record, The Pinto didn't explode at higher rates than other similar automobiles, also there wasn't an internal Ford Memo, it was an attachment to a letter to the NHTSA --but all people remember is the this so called "memo" Anyhow a myth was born and it seemingly refuses to die. By the numbers: In 1975-76, the Pinto averaged 310 fatalities a year. But the similar-size Toyota Corolla averaged 313, the VW Beetle 374 and the Datsun 1200/210 came in at 405. Additional info: https://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/mainblog/2005/07/the_pinto_myth.html https://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/mainblog/2005/07/the_pinto_...
gdilla 2y ago
What? Literally that’s the pint. If your goal is to screw over your costumers to maximize profit then the active still applies. Depends on what your goals are.
deaddodo 2y ago
That's not a counterpoint, that's a list of examples of exactly what they're saying. They're not saying make the best product possible, they're saying make the product that sells the most despite quality.
ngneer 2y ago
I do not view these as counterpoints. You are making the same point, which is that the metric one optimizes for is extremely important. MrBeast is solely focused on maximizing revenue on the YouTube platform. The examples you cite also demonstrate the same exact metric (i.e., profit) in other domains. I know HP was in the habit of crippling its printers to extract more money, to add to your other examples. Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Intel? Are you referring to their selling more capable parts for more money? If so, that does not strike me as a shady practice to maximize profits. More like how the best fruit goes for export, where it can fetch the most return.
cwyers 2y ago
A good example here is Betamax. A lot of people lament that Betamax lost despite being better on a lot of measures: picture quality, etc. But what Betamax wasn't better at than VHS was runtime, and an early application of home VCRs was to time-shift NFL games, which ran longer than Betamax could record. It turns out that the end of NFL games is often the most important part, so people bought VHS instead of Betamax. So best is not some idealized thing, but depends a lot on what exactly you're measuring. But also... this isn't doing well for Boeing? It's costing the money? I don't think Boeing is a template for success.
kmacdough 2y ago
Well a lot of these aren't counterpoints but rather examples of when companies naively followed KPIs to their own detriment. Boing has fallen from dominance to a distant second, Windows has been steadily losing dominance, Ford's darker years were around the Pinto fiasco. While Microsoft as a whole is still quite strong, Ford and Boeing lost significant market position and the losses are partially attributed to these very mistakes.
hartator 2y ago
> Some counterpoints: Maybe all of these companies succeeded _despite_ these?

willvarfar 2y ago

Their definition of "best copier possible" was "most-profitable copier possible", meaning they had to balance getting people to not hate it so much they chose competitors, while not being so reliable it didn't need warrantees and services and parts etc?

bayindirh 2y ago
> not being so reliable it didn't need warrantees[sic] and services and parts etc? The thing is, nothing is completely maintenance free, esp. if there's something mechanical. Make wearing parts wear, core parts robust. All my laser printers were Samsung/Xerox (hah), and their "core" is made like a tank. Only its rollers, toner and imaging/drum kits wear down, and these are already consumables. The device keeps track the life of every of these replaceable components, and you replace them you hit these marks, because they're already worn down to hinder reliable operation (Imager dies at 9K pages, rollers at 20K pages IIRC). You don't need to make things fail prematurely to make something profitable. First one of these printers didn't have replaceable rollers, so I had to donate it after 11 years of operation. This one is almost 8 years old IIRC, and it's still going strong. I'll be using it as long as I can find spares for it, because it's engineered "correctly", not "for profit". Meantime, its manufacturer can still profit from parts, toner and imaging units.
- willvarfar 2y ago
  Not copiers, but the ice cream machines in mcdonalds resturants were kept unreliable because mcdonalds made money on the constant repairs. It didn't matter to them that the franchisee was losing money. When 3rd party companies jumped in to fix the machines the manufacturer and mcdonalds acted to stop that happening. There was a court case brought by the third party companies, which they recently lost.
  - bornfreddy 2y ago
    > ...they recently lost. Who is "they"?
    - chongli 2y ago
      They being the third party repair companies. Johnny Harris did a long piece on the whole story [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
  - kchr 2y ago
    Actually, it looks like the feds have sided with the 3rd parties? https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/14/24101023/ftc-doj-comment-dmca-ifixit-ice-cream-machines https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/14/24101023/ftc-doj-comment-...
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  Why did you write sic after you quoted “warrantees”?
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    The correct spelling is "warranties" (since singular y becomes i when it gets plural). [sic] means "I copied the word as written in its original, and it was already written that way" [0]. [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sic

IanCal 2y ago

Those are problematic business goals, right? I think that's very different to aligning team goals to company goals.

richardw 2y ago

Those still seem like examples of “whatever the company is trying to achieve”, be it profitability, domination, cost minimisation etc.

folken 2y ago

I think this is exactly the point that MrBeast is trying to make. By being best YOUTUBE videos it means to focus on whatever appeals to the algorithm. It doesn't mean you are better informed, or better entertained, as long as the click-through-rate is great and the minutes people watch the video is maximized. You could say the same thing is true for Xerox, for them the best doesn't necessary mean that they sell you the best most reliable copier, but the highest grossing product, with a guaranteed post-sale income. And this is why we can't have nice things.

duxup 2y ago
There was a blog post linked on HN a while ago, it was about their start up they ran many years ago. They got traction with clients and were a very "engineering focused" (or similar term) organization. Their code was rock solid. It was all going great, until suddenly some new company showed up and started taking their customers. Their new competitor's software was a mess with all sorts of incomplete or pure vaporware features.... but they did get features out fast. They got beat out by Salesforce... We as people pick the winners with our money, we don't really want nice things.
- awuji 2y ago
  But most of the time, we as engineers don't pick the winners. Some C-Suite executive or middle manager, who isn't very technically inclined, picks the winners, and we as engineers are forced to make it work. As I don't think a engineer has ever had the chance to choose a company's CRM, the CRM with better marketing would always win over the CRM with better engineering.
  - NikolaNovak 2y ago
    Question I would pose is, why should engineer have the decision on a new CRM? They can provide input regarding e.g. maintainability, but majority of input would come from other stakeholders - users and business unit owning the customers whose relationship we want managed, ideally primarily. And it is somebodys job to take these inputs into collective whole. It was a mind blowing exercise to me 15 years ago when I was telling my boss how horrible our current installation of some ERP software was, and be asked me what's the user perspective. They log in every day, run financial reports they need, and log out. The system was great from their perspective! They had even less concern for my perspective of poor architecture and suboptimal implementation, than I (at that point) had of their perspective and goals. Thank krishna I didn't make the decisions on the CRM :-)

qwerty456127 2y ago

> - Dyson's some batteries are notorious for killing themselves via firmware on slight cell imbalance instead of doing self-balancing. Dyson prioritize "steady income via killing good parts early" instead of "building the best vacuum possible". Any good alternatives?

bayindirh 2y ago
If you really want a Dyson, a better firmware: https://github.com/tinfever/FU-Dyson-BMS https://github.com/tinfever/FU-Dyson-BMS If you are OK on alternatives, YouTube channel ProjectFarm has some vacuum reviews.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  Mine doesn't seem to have any problem with batteries. Just "airways blocked" error no matter what I do and the warranty/support service isn't very helpful. So I'm looking for a similar-or-better quality clone (cordless vacuum with the laser thing) but with better service.
esaym 2y ago
I went down the vacuum rabbit hole a few years ago. I decided on Sebo. These are more or less big ugly machines with a cord, but you can buy every part online no matter how small (screws, gaskets,etc) or big (motors, control boards, etc).
itishappy 2y ago
Riccar, Miele, SEBO. Brands you may not have heard of (I know I hadn't). Highly recommend a visit to your local vacuum repair store. Talk to the guy who's job is fixing all the shitty stick vacs.
CamperBob2 2y ago
Not to stan for Dyson, but they're not a vacuum-cleaner company, they're a fire-prevention company. Every decisionmaking process they undertake is going to have that at the top of the list. They don't want a lot of batteries in the field that are being stretched to the limits of their operating lives. Of course, the company's best response to that concern would be to make the batteries easily replaceable, including by third-party products. But that's where job #2 comes in: make sure the consumer has to buy a new Dyson sooner rather than later.

II2II 2y ago

I suspect the intent was the best for the customer. Like it or not, YouTube is the customer here. The viewers are YouTube's customers.

Applejinx 2y ago
I'd say the viewers are YouTube's quatloos. Advertisers and people seeking behavior modification out of populations are YouTube's customers. MrBeast understands this. The MrBeast goal is to get and stay #1 at whatever YouTube wants, for the purpose of being #1 at whatever YouTube wants. That purpose can be any number of things, MrBeast doesn't care. It's purpose-agnostic.

kogus 2y ago

You are not wrong, but I'd suggest that in those cases the company prioritized short and medium term profit over the long term success of the company. Each of the situations you list ended up costing those companies dearly (except maybe Dyson?), and today they serve as cautionary tales. So I think the original point of "keeping the main thing the main thing" stands.

throw0101a 2y ago

> Some counterpoints: The goal would be to be more customer-focused in those cases. "No one prospers without rendering benefit to others." — Tadao Yoshida, founder of YKK zippers, https://ykkamericas.com/our-philosophy/ https://ykkamericas.com/our-philosophy/ With MrBeast, the "best YOUTUBE video" would be one that causes engagement with the viewer throughout the video: > The creative process for every video they produce starts with the title and thumbnail. These set the expectations for the viewer, and everything that follows needs to be defined with those in mind. If a viewer feels their expectations are not being matched, they’ll click away - driving down the crucial Average View Duration that informs how much the video is promoted by YouTube’s all-important mystical algorithms. You have to both entice the viewer with the thumbnail/title, and meet the expectations of the viewer so they continue watching. Your counterexamples are a bunch of instances where the company did not meet customer expectations.

someothherguyy 2y ago
> No one prospers without rendering benefit to others Plenty of counterexamples for this as well. Snake oil salesmen, drug dealers, woo peddlers, gurus, politicians, grifters, scammers, thieves, and on and on...
CooCooCaCha 2y ago
I hate that so many people live by “wisdom” that falls apart at the slightest scrutiny…
- borroka 2y ago
  Our lives are made up of and guided by narratives that sound good and just on paper, but are empirically proven wrong time and time again. Yet they persist. Some come from the zeitgeist, others are eternal, biblical, and worse, unfalsifiable: "everything happens for a reason," "if you're meant to be together, you will be together," "just do a good job and you'll get what you deserve". The latter was voiced by my postdoc advisor, who did not take the time to look at the percentage of researchers who did good work but did not get a tenure-track position. But perhaps those who did not find jobs did not do good enough work, and the charade continues.

mc32 2y ago

>- Ford didn't fix Pinto's fuel tank, prioritizing cost minimization over "best possible car in its class". This is a nit-pick, but for the record, The Pinto didn't explode at higher rates than other similar automobiles, also there wasn't an internal Ford Memo, it was an attachment to a letter to the NHTSA --but all people remember is the this so called "memo" Anyhow a myth was born and it seemingly refuses to die. By the numbers: In 1975-76, the Pinto averaged 310 fatalities a year. But the similar-size Toyota Corolla averaged 313, the VW Beetle 374 and the Datsun 1200/210 came in at 405. Additional info: https://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/mainblog/2005/07/the_pinto_myth.html https://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/mainblog/2005/07/the_pinto_...

gdilla 2y ago

What? Literally that’s the pint. If your goal is to screw over your costumers to maximize profit then the active still applies. Depends on what your goals are.

deaddodo 2y ago

That's not a counterpoint, that's a list of examples of exactly what they're saying. They're not saying make the best product possible, they're saying make the product that sells the most despite quality.

ngneer 2y ago

I do not view these as counterpoints. You are making the same point, which is that the metric one optimizes for is extremely important. MrBeast is solely focused on maximizing revenue on the YouTube platform. The examples you cite also demonstrate the same exact metric (i.e., profit) in other domains. I know HP was in the habit of crippling its printers to extract more money, to add to your other examples. Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Intel? Are you referring to their selling more capable parts for more money? If so, that does not strike me as a shady practice to maximize profits. More like how the best fruit goes for export, where it can fetch the most return.

cwyers 2y ago

A good example here is Betamax. A lot of people lament that Betamax lost despite being better on a lot of measures: picture quality, etc. But what Betamax wasn't better at than VHS was runtime, and an early application of home VCRs was to time-shift NFL games, which ran longer than Betamax could record. It turns out that the end of NFL games is often the most important part, so people bought VHS instead of Betamax. So best is not some idealized thing, but depends a lot on what exactly you're measuring. But also... this isn't doing well for Boeing? It's costing the money? I don't think Boeing is a template for success.

kmacdough 2y ago

Well a lot of these aren't counterpoints but rather examples of when companies naively followed KPIs to their own detriment. Boing has fallen from dominance to a distant second, Windows has been steadily losing dominance, Ford's darker years were around the Pinto fiasco. While Microsoft as a whole is still quite strong, Ford and Boeing lost significant market position and the losses are partially attributed to these very mistakes.

hartator 2y ago

> Some counterpoints: Maybe all of these companies succeeded _despite_ these?