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Yeah, it’s a problem with the employment and organizational structure, in a way. Software doesn’t need continual redesign and redevelopment at constant scale,

Yeah, it’s a problem with the employment and organizational structure, in a way. Software doesn’t need continual redesign and redevelopment at constant scale, nor is there unlimited need for new software tools in any one company’s wheelhouse, but the expectation is that software companies hire people and keep them onboard as long as they’re performing well, not that they’ll scale up for a periodic launch and then scale down again. And a company that did that — outside of the video game industry — would be shunned by developers (at least in a good labor market).

wtallis 3mo ago
I don't think software companies ship UI churn because they're running out of things to do with their development resources. They're just bad at rewarding bug fixing and bad at saying no to user-visible changes that aren't meaningful improvements big enough to overcome the pain of making users re-learn a changed UI. Microsoft doesn't need to scale down their Windows development resources, they just need to make them do the less-fun parts of their jobs instead of shipping new intern project rewrites of Notepad.
- vrighter 3mo ago
  nah, it's just people wanting to pad their resume. And your resume is usually first read by someone who's only impressed by stuff they can see
- pseudohadamard 3mo ago
  > I don't think software companies ship UI churn because they're running out of things to do with their development resources. I think that's exactly why they do it: "Our division has 600 developers that we're paying large amounts of wages to, if we try and fix some bugs no-one notices but if we roll out the 357th UI refresh everyone notices. OK, UI refresh it is then".
  - wtallis 3mo ago
    You say "that's exactly why they do it" then go on to describe something entirely different: an organization with plenty of options to spend their development resources on, and they make their decision not out of a lack of options but due to misaligned incentives. Which is exactly the point I already made.

wtallis 3mo ago

I don't think software companies ship UI churn because they're running out of things to do with their development resources. They're just bad at rewarding bug fixing and bad at saying no to user-visible changes that aren't meaningful improvements big enough to overcome the pain of making users re-learn a changed UI. Microsoft doesn't need to scale down their Windows development resources, they just need to make them do the less-fun parts of their jobs instead of shipping new intern project rewrites of Notepad.

vrighter 3mo ago
nah, it's just people wanting to pad their resume. And your resume is usually first read by someone who's only impressed by stuff they can see
pseudohadamard 3mo ago
> I don't think software companies ship UI churn because they're running out of things to do with their development resources. I think that's exactly why they do it: "Our division has 600 developers that we're paying large amounts of wages to, if we try and fix some bugs no-one notices but if we roll out the 357th UI refresh everyone notices. OK, UI refresh it is then".
- wtallis 3mo ago
  You say "that's exactly why they do it" then go on to describe something entirely different: an organization with plenty of options to spend their development resources on, and they make their decision not out of a lack of options but due to misaligned incentives. Which is exactly the point I already made.