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Trade-offs to accommodate your resource or skill contraints are just that -- trade-offs. They're not optimal solutions for your users or your products. Singular

Trade-offs to accommodate your resource or skill contraints are just that -- trade-offs. They're not optimal solutions for your users or your products. Singular dedication to user experience may have an intangible value, but Apple and others have consistently demonstrated that the value is high. This isn't a trade-off Facebook needed to make. Whether it's a trade-off your organization needs to make depends on your resource availability, skills, and target market. However, there's no value in dressing up the trade-off as anything other than a trade-off. The target market and product factors into the question of resource allocation. Nest would not have made such a splash if they decided to skip user experience and focus on fast feature roll-out, and Dropbox would not have succeeded to nearly the same degree (if at all) without first-rate native user experience.

tptacek 14y ago
I reject the idea that Nest and Dropbox were in similar positions as Facebook. The entire value proposition of Nest is simple (and simplicity). Same with Dropbox. It is harder to make a case for how Facebook could have had a "simple" value proposition 2 years ago. You're making a case for why Dropbox didn't have to go through the time-to-market-driven experimentation Facebook did. That is indeed an advantage to being Dropbox. It isn't a very good indictment of Facebook's strategy.
- flatline3 14y ago
  Facebook started with a native client. They switched to HTML due to internal organizational politics. I'm not sure what you're arguing -- that somehow Facebook lacked the resources to invest in user experience and rapid mobile development from the beginning? It's not as if mobile was unproven at the time they decided to switch away from their native mobile client.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    If it's so easy for Facebook to get a good mobile client out, why didn't they update the (much loathed) iOS client months and months ago? My suggested answer: it isn't in fact easy for them to do that. So time to market is an issue for them.
    - flatline3 14y ago
      That's a catch 22, and none of it has to do with user experience. - It's not easy because they have a historically web-centric organization. - They have a web-centric organization because they had not invested in building a broader engineering team. - They did not invest in building a broader engineering team because they have a web-centric organization, so they stuck with web technologies. Their engineering management put appeasement of their existing web-centric engineering organization ahead of user-experience.
      - wicknicks 14y ago
        User experience is the not the only governing factor in software development. As the John Carmack post on HN front page says, software engineering is a social activity, which as you can imagine has more than one goal factor influencing it. I don't know what politics went on in this decision, but choosing a HTML/JS platform on mobile phones on definitely has its technical advantages. Though it doesn't apply to Facebook, a financial advantage would be to save money on hiring iOS experts/programmers.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        flatline3 14y ago
        As you noted, the financial advantage does not apply to Facebook. Contrarily, there's a financial advantage to shipping a better product, if you can afford to do so. I'm interested in your supporting argument for other governing factors or software as a social activity, and how that relates to making engineering choices that sacrifice product quality for some notion of engineering perfectionism.
        wicknicks 14y ago
        A better product does not have to be on the native platform. There is financial risk involved in hiring a iOS/Android professional.
  - mbesto 14y ago
    > They switched to HTML due to internal organizational politics. Sorry, but how do you know this? Also, politics in of itself is rarely the real reason why decisions are made. Someone who seeks to gain benefit by making decision (which is deemed therefore political) can certainly be a reason. So, I'd be curious as to what benefit some individual or individuals sought to gain by making this decision.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - flatline3 14y ago
      It's not difficult to determine who in a web-centric engineering organization would benefit from promoting web-centric ideas in favor of alternatives, thus spurning engineering choices that would fall outside their area of responsibility or skill. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobile_was_designed_to_write_once_run.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobi...
    - mbesto 14y ago
      @flatline - couldn't respond to your thread below. > It's not difficult to determine I'm really curious as to who benefits from this internally at FB? Seriously, I'm having a hard time determining who?
      - flatline3 14y ago
        I'm not sure if you're being obtuse; this is basic organizational politics. Pretend that Facebook's hitherto web-centric engineering team is external to Facebook -- they're a consultancy. Now imagine Facebook comes to them and says: We want a mobile application. Who benefits if they manage to convince Facebook to pay for them to produce a web application? Let's reel it back to reality. How do people inside an organization benefit if they expand their area of purview, responsibility, and increase their value to the organization? Likewise, what power dynamics come into play when a new, potentially distinct engineering team garners additional purview, responsibility, outside of your domain, skills, or control?
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
There's no value in dressing down trade-offs as being anything but ubiquitous, either. Supply chain and operational concerns constrained and changed how Apple products turn out, too.

tptacek 14y ago

I reject the idea that Nest and Dropbox were in similar positions as Facebook. The entire value proposition of Nest is simple (and simplicity). Same with Dropbox. It is harder to make a case for how Facebook could have had a "simple" value proposition 2 years ago. You're making a case for why Dropbox didn't have to go through the time-to-market-driven experimentation Facebook did. That is indeed an advantage to being Dropbox. It isn't a very good indictment of Facebook's strategy.

flatline3 14y ago
Facebook started with a native client. They switched to HTML due to internal organizational politics. I'm not sure what you're arguing -- that somehow Facebook lacked the resources to invest in user experience and rapid mobile development from the beginning? It's not as if mobile was unproven at the time they decided to switch away from their native mobile client.
- tptacek 14y ago
  If it's so easy for Facebook to get a good mobile client out, why didn't they update the (much loathed) iOS client months and months ago? My suggested answer: it isn't in fact easy for them to do that. So time to market is an issue for them.
  - flatline3 14y ago
    That's a catch 22, and none of it has to do with user experience. - It's not easy because they have a historically web-centric organization. - They have a web-centric organization because they had not invested in building a broader engineering team. - They did not invest in building a broader engineering team because they have a web-centric organization, so they stuck with web technologies. Their engineering management put appeasement of their existing web-centric engineering organization ahead of user-experience.
    - wicknicks 14y ago
      User experience is the not the only governing factor in software development. As the John Carmack post on HN front page says, software engineering is a social activity, which as you can imagine has more than one goal factor influencing it. I don't know what politics went on in this decision, but choosing a HTML/JS platform on mobile phones on definitely has its technical advantages. Though it doesn't apply to Facebook, a financial advantage would be to save money on hiring iOS experts/programmers.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - flatline3 14y ago
        As you noted, the financial advantage does not apply to Facebook. Contrarily, there's a financial advantage to shipping a better product, if you can afford to do so. I'm interested in your supporting argument for other governing factors or software as a social activity, and how that relates to making engineering choices that sacrifice product quality for some notion of engineering perfectionism.
        wicknicks 14y ago
        A better product does not have to be on the native platform. There is financial risk involved in hiring a iOS/Android professional.
- mbesto 14y ago
  > They switched to HTML due to internal organizational politics. Sorry, but how do you know this? Also, politics in of itself is rarely the real reason why decisions are made. Someone who seeks to gain benefit by making decision (which is deemed therefore political) can certainly be a reason. So, I'd be curious as to what benefit some individual or individuals sought to gain by making this decision.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - flatline3 14y ago
    It's not difficult to determine who in a web-centric engineering organization would benefit from promoting web-centric ideas in favor of alternatives, thus spurning engineering choices that would fall outside their area of responsibility or skill. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobile_was_designed_to_write_once_run.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobi...
  - mbesto 14y ago
    @flatline - couldn't respond to your thread below. > It's not difficult to determine I'm really curious as to who benefits from this internally at FB? Seriously, I'm having a hard time determining who?
    - flatline3 14y ago
      I'm not sure if you're being obtuse; this is basic organizational politics. Pretend that Facebook's hitherto web-centric engineering team is external to Facebook -- they're a consultancy. Now imagine Facebook comes to them and says: We want a mobile application. Who benefits if they manage to convince Facebook to pay for them to produce a web application? Let's reel it back to reality. How do people inside an organization benefit if they expand their area of purview, responsibility, and increase their value to the organization? Likewise, what power dynamics come into play when a new, potentially distinct engineering team garners additional purview, responsibility, outside of your domain, skills, or control?

JumpCrisscross 14y ago

There's no value in dressing down trade-offs as being anything but ubiquitous, either. Supply chain and operational concerns constrained and changed how Apple products turn out, too.