6 ms·

They should have hired a 12 year old to point out the obvious flaws in their products, which are typically quite good but with arbitrary gaping holes. I hope t

by nfoz 13y ago

They should have hired a 12 year old to point out the obvious flaws in their products, which are typically quite good but with arbitrary gaping holes. I hope the VAIO machines stay around, under the rule of someone that knows how to transform their high-end products into high-end products that people really want.

zaidf 13y ago
It's not that they don't know about the flaws; it's usually bureaucracy and compromises that lead to obviously broken features in products. That will take more than a 12 year old to fix.
- nfoz 13y ago
  Ah, I suspect you're right. How is this solvable? Management engineering??
  - zaidf 13y ago
    I think ultimately it requires having a strong champion empowered to make big calls. In product development, what I have seen happen is that everyone has strong views about what must be included for a product to succeed. With no one with either authority or guts to take a stance for and against features, a bunch of average shit gets shipped in hopes of somewhat satisfying everyone instead of really satisfying a core group of customers.
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    it is solvable in organizations with people who have an enormous amount of credibility within the company. The most commmon examples are people who either founded the company or can credibly claim to have been their transformative savior (or in the case of Steve Jobs, both). Of course, founders have a way of either dying (Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard, and Steve Jobs again) or "losing their touch" (Mike Lazaridis of RIM). I would be curious of any examples in which there was such an undisputed leader at a company who was neither its founder nor its savior.
  - nooneelse 13y ago
    In light of the "management engineering" slant, the way people organizations seem to get made reminds me of the old meme that buildings in the far past were 'designed' only to the extent that they didn't follow the exact design of some other building which had fallen down. And in that vein, the answers by zaidf and sirkneeland, are like: buildings above some size keep falling down, so add a big central column in the middle to support the weight. Make all of the building depend on that central column. But buildings evolved to have arches and open domes, no central column needed. Why can't the same be done with people-based control/oversight/management systems? Building a beautiful structure dependent on all/many the members around, not just a central support/dictator.
    - zaidf 13y ago
      Just because you have one person who makes the final call does not mean he isn't reliant on other members of his team. The way Gates describes his process resonates with me: In terms of deciding what programs are going to do, a fairly large group makes suggestions. Then there’s a filtering process. Eventually I’ll decide which of the ideas makes sense, and I’ll make sure we have champions who are personally involved in making that product succeed. http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/bill-gates-1986/ http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/bill-gates-1986/
- dba7dba 13y ago
  Sometimes you need a dictator like figure (or a strong willed captain) who can overrule others in the organization to save the organization...
  - zaidf 13y ago
    Absolutely.
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  I always tell the same story about Sony. The NetMD. Back in the day flash memory was expensive, the RioDimond was for geeks who had far too much money and far too little music. The NetMD was brilliant, Transfer music via USB from your PC, long battery life, cheap enough MDs, you could have days of music with you. I loved the device, I loved the concept. The software. Oh my. The software. Ergh. Apparently it had the code name symphony. A quick history lesson, it's the late 70s, moustaches were plentiful and Sony released BetaMax. They blamed the failure on a lack of content. So when they and phillips championed the audio CD, they knew that they should do something, they bought a bunch of companies and created (eventually) Sony Records. That worked well. Really well, the profits were huge and by the late 90s sony records eclipsed sony electronics. We now jump forward to the NetMD project coming online, the records division apparently were un-happy. So a bunch of restrictions were brought in, you could only transfer a song to the NetMD 3 times. That was your limit. The software and interface where buggy, so this became a problem if it crashed during the transfer. A brilliant device was nobbled by the internal politics. I still say it wasn't until 8gb+ capacities became cheap, that any mp3 player surpassed it. I would love to be able to provide some sources for this, I was told it by someone who contacted me after I'd stopped work on my util NetMDCalls [1] which was for helping people provide a FOSS alternative to sonic stage. I had a nice person explain that I was breaking the licensing of their software and to stop development on it, but because I was a minor they wouldn't do anything to me, sadly, my parents did not share my libertarian views and development stopped as my NetMD was confiscated. [1] - http://www.0bytes.net/netmd/ http://www.0bytes.net/netmd/
  - 10feet 13y ago
    They also hobbled the functionality so you could not get digital recordings from the device. Lots of DJs, producers, etc... wanted to use it to record live music sessions, then transfer them to their machine at home. This is when Sony fucked themselves, they went from an amazing electronics company, to a content producing company with a shitty electronics side. All the decisions were made by the content side. This is when they started their slide. It is awful to think about, when you read about the origins of Sony, and how much they were revered for producing top of the line stuff in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
nfoz 13y ago
I'm serious about the 12-year-old point: that's not pejorative, I think that young people can sometimes be very good at identifying the problems that older people miss. Maybe youth has less to do with it than staying distant from convention, and having an imagination and attention for detail. Sony will get so close at times, and then just... miss the mark. My super expensive ultraportable Vaio had some great ideas but a flimsy screen, bright aggressive LEDs, giant VAIO lettering all over, an awful out-of-box Crapware-Inside accept-these-license-terms experience, tragic speakers, a roaring-hot battery-draining graphics card, and a host of other little problems.
- Aloha 13y ago
  It takes a certain amount of bluntness to shake people out of 'the process' and get them to pay attention to the actuality of whats going on. I've seen many companies where everyone is following process, and doing their job, yet nothing gets done, or worse, there is no quality improvement.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  I think everybody pretty much knows what's wrong with Sony. No need to hire 12-year-olds or anyone else, besides a Jobs- or Gates-like authority figure who can put the DRM-obsessed content division and assorted NIH die-hards in the PC division in their place (or preferably ditch them altogether.)

by nfoz 13y ago

zaidf 13y ago

It's not that they don't know about the flaws; it's usually bureaucracy and compromises that lead to obviously broken features in products. That will take more than a 12 year old to fix.

nfoz 13y ago
Ah, I suspect you're right. How is this solvable? Management engineering??
- zaidf 13y ago
  I think ultimately it requires having a strong champion empowered to make big calls. In product development, what I have seen happen is that everyone has strong views about what must be included for a product to succeed. With no one with either authority or guts to take a stance for and against features, a bunch of average shit gets shipped in hopes of somewhat satisfying everyone instead of really satisfying a core group of customers.
- sirkneeland 13y ago
  it is solvable in organizations with people who have an enormous amount of credibility within the company. The most commmon examples are people who either founded the company or can credibly claim to have been their transformative savior (or in the case of Steve Jobs, both). Of course, founders have a way of either dying (Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard, and Steve Jobs again) or "losing their touch" (Mike Lazaridis of RIM). I would be curious of any examples in which there was such an undisputed leader at a company who was neither its founder nor its savior.
- nooneelse 13y ago
  In light of the "management engineering" slant, the way people organizations seem to get made reminds me of the old meme that buildings in the far past were 'designed' only to the extent that they didn't follow the exact design of some other building which had fallen down. And in that vein, the answers by zaidf and sirkneeland, are like: buildings above some size keep falling down, so add a big central column in the middle to support the weight. Make all of the building depend on that central column. But buildings evolved to have arches and open domes, no central column needed. Why can't the same be done with people-based control/oversight/management systems? Building a beautiful structure dependent on all/many the members around, not just a central support/dictator.
  - zaidf 13y ago
    Just because you have one person who makes the final call does not mean he isn't reliant on other members of his team. The way Gates describes his process resonates with me: In terms of deciding what programs are going to do, a fairly large group makes suggestions. Then there’s a filtering process. Eventually I’ll decide which of the ideas makes sense, and I’ll make sure we have champions who are personally involved in making that product succeed. http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/bill-gates-1986/ http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/bill-gates-1986/
dba7dba 13y ago
Sometimes you need a dictator like figure (or a strong willed captain) who can overrule others in the organization to save the organization...
- zaidf 13y ago
  Absolutely.
TheAnimus 13y ago
I always tell the same story about Sony. The NetMD. Back in the day flash memory was expensive, the RioDimond was for geeks who had far too much money and far too little music. The NetMD was brilliant, Transfer music via USB from your PC, long battery life, cheap enough MDs, you could have days of music with you. I loved the device, I loved the concept. The software. Oh my. The software. Ergh. Apparently it had the code name symphony. A quick history lesson, it's the late 70s, moustaches were plentiful and Sony released BetaMax. They blamed the failure on a lack of content. So when they and phillips championed the audio CD, they knew that they should do something, they bought a bunch of companies and created (eventually) Sony Records. That worked well. Really well, the profits were huge and by the late 90s sony records eclipsed sony electronics. We now jump forward to the NetMD project coming online, the records division apparently were un-happy. So a bunch of restrictions were brought in, you could only transfer a song to the NetMD 3 times. That was your limit. The software and interface where buggy, so this became a problem if it crashed during the transfer. A brilliant device was nobbled by the internal politics. I still say it wasn't until 8gb+ capacities became cheap, that any mp3 player surpassed it. I would love to be able to provide some sources for this, I was told it by someone who contacted me after I'd stopped work on my util NetMDCalls [1] which was for helping people provide a FOSS alternative to sonic stage. I had a nice person explain that I was breaking the licensing of their software and to stop development on it, but because I was a minor they wouldn't do anything to me, sadly, my parents did not share my libertarian views and development stopped as my NetMD was confiscated. [1] - http://www.0bytes.net/netmd/ http://www.0bytes.net/netmd/
- 10feet 13y ago
  They also hobbled the functionality so you could not get digital recordings from the device. Lots of DJs, producers, etc... wanted to use it to record live music sessions, then transfer them to their machine at home. This is when Sony fucked themselves, they went from an amazing electronics company, to a content producing company with a shitty electronics side. All the decisions were made by the content side. This is when they started their slide. It is awful to think about, when you read about the origins of Sony, and how much they were revered for producing top of the line stuff in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

nfoz 13y ago

I'm serious about the 12-year-old point: that's not pejorative, I think that young people can sometimes be very good at identifying the problems that older people miss. Maybe youth has less to do with it than staying distant from convention, and having an imagination and attention for detail. Sony will get so close at times, and then just... miss the mark. My super expensive ultraportable Vaio had some great ideas but a flimsy screen, bright aggressive LEDs, giant VAIO lettering all over, an awful out-of-box Crapware-Inside accept-these-license-terms experience, tragic speakers, a roaring-hot battery-draining graphics card, and a host of other little problems.

Aloha 13y ago
It takes a certain amount of bluntness to shake people out of 'the process' and get them to pay attention to the actuality of whats going on. I've seen many companies where everyone is following process, and doing their job, yet nothing gets done, or worse, there is no quality improvement.
CamperBob2 13y ago
I think everybody pretty much knows what's wrong with Sony. No need to hire 12-year-olds or anyone else, besides a Jobs- or Gates-like authority figure who can put the DRM-obsessed content division and assorted NIH die-hards in the PC division in their place (or preferably ditch them altogether.)