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> Except for some Samsung appliances made ~ 2010-2014 which seemed to fail just after their warranties expired. And? That just sounds like they have good engi

> Except for some Samsung appliances made ~ 2010-2014 which seemed to fail just after their warranties expired. And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. Every choice of a component affects lifetime. Designers of mass-market products can't just use premium components everywhere -- the mass market will not pay steep premiums for otherwise equivalent products. Value engineering and planned obsolescence are not the same thing, but they are often confused. That being said, Samsung appliances suck and I hate them. Mine failed within warranty several times. > And, with the pressures of multinational oligopolies and BlackRock/Vanguard/State Street.. there is little incentive to invest $100M into a moderately-superior incandescent lightbulb using yesterday's technology that lasts 100kh and 5k cycles and sells for $1 more than the next one. It isn't that. It's pressure at the shelf that does it. Consumers behavior simply does not reward equivalent-feature products with premium components that claim (true or not) to have a longer lifespan. Unfortunately, they will buy based on their uninformed sense of quality first. If you release a light bulb that is identical to the best selling one on the shelf, but claims 10x lifespan, your competitor will do something like gluing a weight in theirs, putting some marketing BS on the box, and will put you out of business. Consumers just don't pick products based on actual quality.

magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
You're making a pretty awkward value judgement about what a "good" engineer is, but you're describing an unethical one with a bizword like "value engineering". I realize ethics are no longer understood by much of Western society because the culture teaches transactionality, worships trickle-down economics and greed, and hyperindividualism. > It isn't that. It's pressure at the shelf that does it. Consumers behavior simply does not reward equivalent-feature products with premium components that claim (true or not) to have a longer lifespan. Unfortunately, they will buy based on their uninformed sense of quality first. This is a failure of marketing and buzz of the sales channel(s) and manufacturers to educate properly, not the failure of the customer.
- kube-system 2y ago
  A good engineer is one that has a job, doesn't put their employer out of business, and produces work that fulfills the requirements they're given. Many people think there's some unethical conspiracy going on, and consumers actually want a product that lasts a long time, but companies are refusing to give it to them. But this is projection of individual preferences on to the market as a whole. Consumers want cheap shit that is in fashion, and their buying preferences prove this time and again. Maybe you want a 50 year old toaster in your kitchen, other people are buying products based on other factors. If consumers really wanted to pay a premium for high duty-cycle equipment with premium lifespans, they can already do that by buying commercial grade equipment. But they don't. If you are familiar with the history of home appliances, you'd probably come to appreciate the phrase 'value engineering'. Even poor people can afford basic electric appliances now because of the ingenuous ways that engineers have designed surprisingly usable appliances out of very minimal and efficient designs. If you look at ads for electric toasters 100 years ago, you'd see they cost over $300 in today's money adjusted for inflation. Thank god for value engineering.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    A good engineer provides value to society. If they fulfill requirements that are bad for others then they are not good engineers. I seems to me that there is also a social dynamic to things. If consumer grade products become a race to the bottom then it is going to become more difficult for regular people to purchase products which aren't low quality. There's also a degree to which society (e.g. in the form of government policy, cost of living adjustments, etc.) factors in differences in prices.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      The fact that poor people can now afford to own some household appliances isn't a huge value to society? It completely changed the way our societies operate. I think it is a good thing that people have the option to buy crappy washing machines, rather than being forced to use the washboard and bucket my grandmother used. Yeah, they sometimes do develop a bad belt, or the timer mechanism might fail. But it beats being unwillingly forced into homemaking as a career. The world only has so much wealth to go around, and that isn't the moral quandary of the engineer picking an item on a BOM on Tuesday morning to fix. If anything, squeezing a few more pennies out of that BOM is going to lift some people at the fringes out of poverty. At the opposite end of the product value equation, every unused and functional component in every product that is no longer in service, is wealth that is wasted that could have been spent elsewhere.
Dylan16807 2y ago
> And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. > Every choice of a component affects lifetime. Designers of mass-market products can't just use premium components everywhere -- the mass market will not pay steep premiums for otherwise equivalent products. Dying just out of warranty is only okay if the warranty covers the actual expected lifetime of the product. And for appliances, it doesn't. The difference between a 5 year washing machine and a 30 year washing machine is not very big. Anyone pinching those specific pennies is doing a bad thing.
- kube-system 2y ago
  If you think people want 30 year old washing machines, you're kidding yourself. Do you remember what washing machines were like in the 1990s? They were noisy and tore up clothing. Not only would I not want to use one of these outdated machines, nor display it in my home, but I also wouldn't have wanted to move it to the dozen different addresses I have lived at since then. At least in the US, people move frequently, and a washing machine that lasts for decades isn't even a benefit, because they'll likely have left it behind. > The difference between a 5 year washing machine and a 30 year washing machine is not very big. Anyone pinching those specific pennies is doing a bad thing. Absolutely right, it's only a matter of tens of dollars, probably. However, retail consumer appliances live and die at the margins. Nobody is opening up their washer to inspect the components to see if the $510 washer has better components than the $499 washer. All else equal, they're buying the $499 washer 90% of the time. Your fixed costs are going to eat you alive when spread across your fewer units, and retailers will stop carrying your product because it isn't moving.... All the while the $499 washer is going to be sitting in that home 5 years from now when the realtor puts a sign out front. And literally zero people are buying a house based on the bearings in the washing machine.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > If you think people want 30 year old washing machines, you're kidding yourself. You say this in the same breath you talk about people being desperate for any cheapest appliance instead of having nothing? > And literally zero people are buying a house based on the bearings in the washing machine. Well that's them being dumb.
consp 2y ago
> And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. Product have an expected lifespan longer than the warranty period. This is malicious if given as a target. I'd like to see MTBF numbers on everything so people can lump together and sue the shit out of manufacturers who do this. Would also make it easier to check the 25$ light bulb.
- kube-system 2y ago
  > Product have an expected lifespan longer than the warranty period. This is malicious if given as a target. Also it is mathematically stupid, because products do not fail at consistent rates, nor are they used by customers are equal rates. If you want to minimize warranty costs, you do need to target some mean lifetime well beyond the warranty period. MTBF (or MTTF) might be useful number if you buy 100 light bulbs, but is not really a useful number for you buying one appliance. Product failures don't follow a normal distribution. The stuff that ticks people off about shitty products is the infancy-failure part of the bathtub curve -- It's when you get 13 months out of a $200 blender that fails in infancy that you're pissed. Not when you get 24 months out of a $20 blender that fails from end-of-life.

magic_smoke_ee 2y ago

You're making a pretty awkward value judgement about what a "good" engineer is, but you're describing an unethical one with a bizword like "value engineering". I realize ethics are no longer understood by much of Western society because the culture teaches transactionality, worships trickle-down economics and greed, and hyperindividualism. > It isn't that. It's pressure at the shelf that does it. Consumers behavior simply does not reward equivalent-feature products with premium components that claim (true or not) to have a longer lifespan. Unfortunately, they will buy based on their uninformed sense of quality first. This is a failure of marketing and buzz of the sales channel(s) and manufacturers to educate properly, not the failure of the customer.

kube-system 2y ago
A good engineer is one that has a job, doesn't put their employer out of business, and produces work that fulfills the requirements they're given. Many people think there's some unethical conspiracy going on, and consumers actually want a product that lasts a long time, but companies are refusing to give it to them. But this is projection of individual preferences on to the market as a whole. Consumers want cheap shit that is in fashion, and their buying preferences prove this time and again. Maybe you want a 50 year old toaster in your kitchen, other people are buying products based on other factors. If consumers really wanted to pay a premium for high duty-cycle equipment with premium lifespans, they can already do that by buying commercial grade equipment. But they don't. If you are familiar with the history of home appliances, you'd probably come to appreciate the phrase 'value engineering'. Even poor people can afford basic electric appliances now because of the ingenuous ways that engineers have designed surprisingly usable appliances out of very minimal and efficient designs. If you look at ads for electric toasters 100 years ago, you'd see they cost over $300 in today's money adjusted for inflation. Thank god for value engineering.
- harimau777 2y ago
  A good engineer provides value to society. If they fulfill requirements that are bad for others then they are not good engineers. I seems to me that there is also a social dynamic to things. If consumer grade products become a race to the bottom then it is going to become more difficult for regular people to purchase products which aren't low quality. There's also a degree to which society (e.g. in the form of government policy, cost of living adjustments, etc.) factors in differences in prices.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    The fact that poor people can now afford to own some household appliances isn't a huge value to society? It completely changed the way our societies operate. I think it is a good thing that people have the option to buy crappy washing machines, rather than being forced to use the washboard and bucket my grandmother used. Yeah, they sometimes do develop a bad belt, or the timer mechanism might fail. But it beats being unwillingly forced into homemaking as a career. The world only has so much wealth to go around, and that isn't the moral quandary of the engineer picking an item on a BOM on Tuesday morning to fix. If anything, squeezing a few more pennies out of that BOM is going to lift some people at the fringes out of poverty. At the opposite end of the product value equation, every unused and functional component in every product that is no longer in service, is wealth that is wasted that could have been spent elsewhere.

Dylan16807 2y ago

> And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. > Every choice of a component affects lifetime. Designers of mass-market products can't just use premium components everywhere -- the mass market will not pay steep premiums for otherwise equivalent products. Dying just out of warranty is only okay if the warranty covers the actual expected lifetime of the product. And for appliances, it doesn't. The difference between a 5 year washing machine and a 30 year washing machine is not very big. Anyone pinching those specific pennies is doing a bad thing.

kube-system 2y ago
If you think people want 30 year old washing machines, you're kidding yourself. Do you remember what washing machines were like in the 1990s? They were noisy and tore up clothing. Not only would I not want to use one of these outdated machines, nor display it in my home, but I also wouldn't have wanted to move it to the dozen different addresses I have lived at since then. At least in the US, people move frequently, and a washing machine that lasts for decades isn't even a benefit, because they'll likely have left it behind. > The difference between a 5 year washing machine and a 30 year washing machine is not very big. Anyone pinching those specific pennies is doing a bad thing. Absolutely right, it's only a matter of tens of dollars, probably. However, retail consumer appliances live and die at the margins. Nobody is opening up their washer to inspect the components to see if the $510 washer has better components than the $499 washer. All else equal, they're buying the $499 washer 90% of the time. Your fixed costs are going to eat you alive when spread across your fewer units, and retailers will stop carrying your product because it isn't moving.... All the while the $499 washer is going to be sitting in that home 5 years from now when the realtor puts a sign out front. And literally zero people are buying a house based on the bearings in the washing machine.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > If you think people want 30 year old washing machines, you're kidding yourself. You say this in the same breath you talk about people being desperate for any cheapest appliance instead of having nothing? > And literally zero people are buying a house based on the bearings in the washing machine. Well that's them being dumb.

consp 2y ago

> And? That just sounds like they have good engineers. If you are designing a machine, you have an target lifetime. You'd obviously want the product to last through the warranty period, because warranty claims are a cost to the company. Product have an expected lifespan longer than the warranty period. This is malicious if given as a target. I'd like to see MTBF numbers on everything so people can lump together and sue the shit out of manufacturers who do this. Would also make it easier to check the 25$ light bulb.

kube-system 2y ago
> Product have an expected lifespan longer than the warranty period. This is malicious if given as a target. Also it is mathematically stupid, because products do not fail at consistent rates, nor are they used by customers are equal rates. If you want to minimize warranty costs, you do need to target some mean lifetime well beyond the warranty period. MTBF (or MTTF) might be useful number if you buy 100 light bulbs, but is not really a useful number for you buying one appliance. Product failures don't follow a normal distribution. The stuff that ticks people off about shitty products is the infancy-failure part of the bathtub curve -- It's when you get 13 months out of a $200 blender that fails in infancy that you're pissed. Not when you get 24 months out of a $20 blender that fails from end-of-life.