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Principal engineer balks at bad UX when the PM should know better (it's their job) 2023: Ah well I guess we can't do it 2025: you're fired. Hey kid we hired t

Principal engineer balks at bad UX when the PM should know better (it's their job) 2023: Ah well I guess we can't do it 2025: you're fired. Hey kid we hired two weeks ago, implement bad idea please

palata 6mo ago
To be fair, it was already done by bad managers long before.
- hirako2000 6mo ago
  I saw a trend of UX/UI designers coming with practice which I knew better were wrong. But they insisted. E.g hijack brosser native controls. Will never know whether they passed along some manager/PM commandements or were just incompetent.
  - themanualstates 6mo ago
    To be fair, the native browser controls have had too many quirks and features fox UX/UI consistency. Corporate needs their Brand™ look precisely as specified in their expensive Style Guide. IBM wouldn't want the Google vibes of Android Material Design TextFields, I imagine. Scratch beneath the visuals, and starker technical differences appear. Safari on iOS (used to?) has a 350ms debounce delay on every tap / click, in case you want to do a multitouch gesture. JavaScript (Frameworks) were the only way this arbitrary delay to user input could be reduced before 2015, when Apple finally released a native API for this. https://webkit.org/blog/5610/more-responsive-tapping-on-ios/ https://webkit.org/blog/5610/more-responsive-tapping-on-ios/
    - eru 6mo ago
      > To be fair, the native browser controls have had too many quirks and features fox UX/UI consistency. Well, too many to have a single website be consistent across browsers. But as a user I'm using one specific browsers, and I expect all websites be consistent for that browser.
  - Terr_ 6mo ago
    > But they insisted. E.g hijack brosser native controls. [Rant-Example] The goshdarn ticketing-system hijacks alt-f, so that instead of opening the File menu of my browser, and instead toggles the favorite-status of whatever ticket I happen to be viewing.
    - walletdrainer 6mo ago
      Have you tried creating a ticket complaining about this?
      - cineticdaffodil 6mo ago
        Press alt f to pay respect with the "respect my AI.thority" subscription
      - Terr_ 6mo ago
        I did, and they probably don't care because they want everyone to use the electron app instead.
    - twic 6mo ago
      A mistake was made early on even letting web apps see keystrokes like that. In a better world, modifier keys were used in a principled way from the start - only the window manager gets to see meta-anything, only the shell or GUI app gets to see control-anything, and web apps can work with alt-anything.
- coldtea 6mo ago
  With some resistance. Now they do it far more often.
- wmeredith 6mo ago
  This is what I sees getting missed in a lot of LLM conversations. They're amplifiers. Full stop. If you have good practices they supercharge them, if you had bad practices, same thing.
  - vkou 6mo ago
    Does our society generally have good, user-friendly practices? What will amplifying its output do?
brazukadev 6mo ago
That's how I got my first opportunity 20 years ago
- conartist6 6mo ago
  :'D
- mohamedkoubaa 6mo ago
  Don't hate the player hate the game I guess
Kwpolska 6mo ago
2026: you're fired. Hey Claude, implement bad idea please
- cookiengineer 6mo ago
  That is a great idea, very inspirational! Do you want me to implement another bad idea, too?
yubblegum 6mo ago
Give me a break. This was already happening with Web 2.0 and things like "microservices".
- mohamedkoubaa 6mo ago
  I know it's just that we are in an accelerated state of Putt's Law
  - yubblegum 6mo ago
    Had to look that up: Putt's Law: "Putt's Law: "Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand." I suggest that this law does not give a complete description of what has been happening to software engineering in the past 2 decades: Putt's Law does not address the (new) phenomena we first saw when 'blog hotness' and minimal effort frameworks permitted practitioners with little practical experience or hard gained knowledge to manifest technical capability and assert technical authority. The minimal amount of 'wit' required was access to a smart phone, wiki, or some blog, and you had complete juniors arguing with seniors about architecture, frameworks. AI is taking that to the extreme. Putt's Law's relevance here is that prior to the past 2 decades of enabling tech and knowledge bases 'the clueless manager' had the metric of "older more senior more likely to be correct", and clueless juniors didn't have blogs or wikis or frameworks that required a handful of shell commands to install, and spinup a 'demo'. AI has made that even worse.
JXavierH 6mo ago
Implement bad idea, but use AI. That's the MO right now.

Principal engineer balks at bad UX when the PM should know better (it's their job) 2023: Ah well I guess we can't do it 2025: you're fired. Hey kid we hired two weeks ago, implement bad idea please

palata 6mo ago

To be fair, it was already done by bad managers long before.

hirako2000 6mo ago
I saw a trend of UX/UI designers coming with practice which I knew better were wrong. But they insisted. E.g hijack brosser native controls. Will never know whether they passed along some manager/PM commandements or were just incompetent.
- themanualstates 6mo ago
  To be fair, the native browser controls have had too many quirks and features fox UX/UI consistency. Corporate needs their Brand™ look precisely as specified in their expensive Style Guide. IBM wouldn't want the Google vibes of Android Material Design TextFields, I imagine. Scratch beneath the visuals, and starker technical differences appear. Safari on iOS (used to?) has a 350ms debounce delay on every tap / click, in case you want to do a multitouch gesture. JavaScript (Frameworks) were the only way this arbitrary delay to user input could be reduced before 2015, when Apple finally released a native API for this. https://webkit.org/blog/5610/more-responsive-tapping-on-ios/ https://webkit.org/blog/5610/more-responsive-tapping-on-ios/
  - eru 6mo ago
    > To be fair, the native browser controls have had too many quirks and features fox UX/UI consistency. Well, too many to have a single website be consistent across browsers. But as a user I'm using one specific browsers, and I expect all websites be consistent for that browser.
- Terr_ 6mo ago
  > But they insisted. E.g hijack brosser native controls. [Rant-Example] The goshdarn ticketing-system hijacks alt-f, so that instead of opening the File menu of my browser, and instead toggles the favorite-status of whatever ticket I happen to be viewing.
  - walletdrainer 6mo ago
    Have you tried creating a ticket complaining about this?
    - cineticdaffodil 6mo ago
      Press alt f to pay respect with the "respect my AI.thority" subscription
    - Terr_ 6mo ago
      I did, and they probably don't care because they want everyone to use the electron app instead.
  - twic 6mo ago
    A mistake was made early on even letting web apps see keystrokes like that. In a better world, modifier keys were used in a principled way from the start - only the window manager gets to see meta-anything, only the shell or GUI app gets to see control-anything, and web apps can work with alt-anything.
coldtea 6mo ago
With some resistance. Now they do it far more often.
wmeredith 6mo ago
This is what I sees getting missed in a lot of LLM conversations. They're amplifiers. Full stop. If you have good practices they supercharge them, if you had bad practices, same thing.
- vkou 6mo ago
  Does our society generally have good, user-friendly practices? What will amplifying its output do?

brazukadev 6mo ago

That's how I got my first opportunity 20 years ago

conartist6 6mo ago
:'D
mohamedkoubaa 6mo ago
Don't hate the player hate the game I guess

Kwpolska 6mo ago

2026: you're fired. Hey Claude, implement bad idea please

cookiengineer 6mo ago
That is a great idea, very inspirational! Do you want me to implement another bad idea, too?

yubblegum 6mo ago

Give me a break. This was already happening with Web 2.0 and things like "microservices".

mohamedkoubaa 6mo ago
I know it's just that we are in an accelerated state of Putt's Law
- yubblegum 6mo ago
  Had to look that up: Putt's Law: "Putt's Law: "Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand." I suggest that this law does not give a complete description of what has been happening to software engineering in the past 2 decades: Putt's Law does not address the (new) phenomena we first saw when 'blog hotness' and minimal effort frameworks permitted practitioners with little practical experience or hard gained knowledge to manifest technical capability and assert technical authority. The minimal amount of 'wit' required was access to a smart phone, wiki, or some blog, and you had complete juniors arguing with seniors about architecture, frameworks. AI is taking that to the extreme. Putt's Law's relevance here is that prior to the past 2 decades of enabling tech and knowledge bases 'the clueless manager' had the metric of "older more senior more likely to be correct", and clueless juniors didn't have blogs or wikis or frameworks that required a handful of shell commands to install, and spinup a 'demo'. AI has made that even worse.

JXavierH 6mo ago

Implement bad idea, but use AI. That's the MO right now.