8 ms·

This is essentially what happened in my group when I was at Yahoo. Our group spent several months on a redesign that made it significantly more modern and easi

by steven2012 13y ago

This is essentially what happened in my group when I was at Yahoo. Our group spent several months on a redesign that made it significantly more modern and easier to use. After it went live, though, this decreased the number of ad clicks by a significant number, and the people in charge hurriedly reverted all the changes back, since they needed to make their revenue numbers in order to make their bonus. When you are stuck in a company that can't innovate because a shitty site leads to more money due to inertia, then you know you are on your way down. This leads to your best developers thinking "what the fuck did I waste all my time for?" and they will leave in no uncertain terms.

ignostic 13y ago
I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard. Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said, > "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will actually lead to long-term benefits–or do you scrap the new design and start over?" Would the simplified, modern design have led Yahoo into a new era of profitability? Maybe. Or maybe they'd just have a nicer site that made less money for a year. Our team made a site that made less per visitor, but we felt like it was a better-looking and more useful site. We decided to stick with it and work out the kinks, but ~6 months went by without reaching our old sites' benchmark. There was a ton of pressure on me to make it work or admit defeat and revert. I nearly gave in as the stress built, but eventually revenue surpassed the old site. I later learned that I was almost fired over it. My story has a happy ending, but just barely. I have sympathy for the people making these decisions.
- kenko 13y ago
  There's a lot of room between "exist to make money" and "must make money in order to exist". Like, a staggering amount of room.
  - ksikka 13y ago
    there's also a lot of pressure when you're public
  - baddox 13y ago
    I don't really see much of a difference. If a company must make money to continue to exist, then I think it's reasonable to say that company "exists to make money." Of course, that doesn't mean is exists only to make money.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - khafra 13y ago
      The practical difference disappears when your operating margin is 0. When you have money left over after paying your essential expenses, though, you can do stuff. Like, if you're Microsoft and you have 60 billion in cash, you can have a big R&D department that sometimes engages in blue-sky research.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      Do you consider a company like Raspberry Pi or Oxfam to "exist to make money"? They certainly need money to exist.
    - kenko 13y ago
      Lots of bookstores, cafes, antique shops, whatever, are labors of love. And not only things like that. A bakery---a good bakery!---exists to make good bread. It has to sell that bread and cover its costs, etc., in order to do that, but it doesn't exist in order to make the money necessary to cover its costs. If that were why it existed, it would be easier to abandon the end of making good bread!
  - pshin45 13y ago
    Exactly, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: "We survive by breathing but we can't say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist."
- vra 13y ago
  interesting
- ampersandy 13y ago
  To be fair, revenue could have kept growing with the old design; you still don't know if you've achieved more with the new one!
- wisty 13y ago
  > Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Hows that working for Yahoo now? Actually, that's kind of disingenuous. Google optimises for less clicks per user, because Google is a site for people who want to get stuff done. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters. And unlike Yahoo, I can't see it ever transitioning to anything other than a time-waster. Time-wasters are basically unprofitable (you're getting clicks from people who are looking to kill time, not find a new insurance policy), but that's what Facebook is. Unless Facebook wants to become the new Linked-In (and they don't - Linked-In just doesn't have the market cap), they just have to be a better time-waster. If Facebook had a lower valuation, they might be able to move to a position where their focus was on serving people doing stuff, not wasting time, but they can't.
  - dionidium 13y ago
    Hows that working for Yahoo now? Is that supposed to be snark? I realize they're not fashionable, but Yahoo is still quite successful.
  - mehwoot 13y ago
    Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech circles, they are just a business that makes money. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters... Time-wasters are basically unprofitable Yeah, unprofitable to the tune of $600 million a year. That's Yahoo's net profit last year. I swear to god, the blindness of people to anything that's not hip right now is amazing. People assume because they personally stopped caring about something that it must have failed.
    - hrjet 13y ago
      IIRC, they were the top destination 15 years back. They were the default homepage in most browsers. From that spot to "just a business that makes money" is perhaps not the best thing to happen to them. At the same time, I don't think Yahoo is purely money-minded. From what I read, they were the only company which challenged the FISA orders last year (even before the Snowden leaks).
- cfontes 13y ago
  It happened www.lifehacker.com a few years ago. But I think they really made it worst after the updated UI, I never got back there.
baddox 13y ago
I think I can see both sides. If all meaningful stats you are collecting are going down, I think something is definitely wrong. There are basically three options: 1. Fix/revert the update so that those stats increase again. This is probably the easiest/quickest option, especially the revert, but it obviously sucks to have "wasted" time on the updates. 2. Collect new/more stats that you deem meaningful and see if those have increased. This is the one that I like best from the perspective of a lowly programmer who worked hard on the updates, because it provides the possibility that even though existing stats have worsened, the updates are still empirically better. Of course, it's hard to figure out what new stats to look for, and whether or not to deem them truly meaningful. An oversimplified example would be if all you're looking at is ad conversions, maybe you should start looking at user retention as well, because even if ad conversions decrease, a large increase in retention can in the long (or even short) run lead to more revenue. 3. Ignore the numbers on the prediction that the numbers will increase over time. This one is also appealing, but will and probably should be rejected by management. Something that also needs to be recognized is that "significantly more modern and easier to use" is a subjective claim, and is not necessarily "better" for whatever definition of "better" the company is using.
eevilspock 13y ago
Nearly everyone has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these. IT'S NOT FREE We’re not Facebook’s customers, advertisers are (more on this below). But we are the advertiser’s customers, and the cost of the "free lunch" is simply shifted to the price of the things we buy from them. In other words we still end up paying for the full cost of Facebook (and even more, as I'll get to next). Costs may even shift regressively, to advertised products predominately consumed by those with lower incomes, in which case the poor are subsidizing the better off. IT'S MORE EXPENSIVE... Not only are you still paying for the full cost of the Facebook product you use, you are paying for all the advertising overhead: the costs of its advertising technology and infrastructure (huge, btw), the agency and creative costs (Don Draper and company have to pay for the hookers and scotch somehow, not to mention what’s-his-name who basically just lounges in his office barefoot thinking Japanese), and the advertiser's big marketing departments (that often outnumber and outspend the people making the product!). The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks. – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera So in addition to the original product cost and the ad overhead costs, you are also paying the opportunity cost of an inferior product (as Dennis Curtis points out in the OP) as well as the engineering costs of figuring out how to optimize ad revenue, because that’s what happens when websites have to design to please advertisers over pleasing us, the users. Dalton Caldwell makes this point comparing Sourceforge to Github[1]. As ergo says in a comment[2], “If the new news feed is making their advertisers happy (and bringing revenue into Facebook), then that's what they optimize for.” As jfoster says in a comment[3], “Ad-supported models untie the relationship between UX and revenue.” Furthermore, our identities and privacy are bought and sold to the highest bidders. And where do the bidders get their money? From us of course! A double whammy! We're trading our privacy for free product? Bullshit. We get personalization? Bullshit. Personalization means optimizing something for me, not optimizing for the advertiser. Again, we're not the real customer. We’re certainly not Google’s[4][5]. WAIT. IT'S EVEN WORSE... Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club Think of the social costs of advertising. The web is infested with misinformation and manipulation. Beside the lying ads themselves, relying on a revenue stream entirely dependent on how many ads are seen severely affects the moral choices of those who decide what gets produced and how its presented. What are the costs of a misinformed and variously manipulated citizenry, of distortions to the free-market? Knowledge and discourse are the lifeblood of both democracy, free markets, progress. The web, from the little scammy websites to the big brand ones that so many blindly trust, has a huge influence on who we vote for, what we buy, and most importantly, what we believe. There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. This "free" ad-"supported" web we have is much too expensive. — [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484075 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484442 [4] Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. "They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services," he joked. - Wired, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data/all/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data... [5] Google's once famous clean and neutral search results are now cluttered and biased (http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-actual-google-results-to-bottom-12-of-the-screen/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-...).

ignostic 13y ago

I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard. Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said, > "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will actually lead to long-term benefits–or do you scrap the new design and start over?" Would the simplified, modern design have led Yahoo into a new era of profitability? Maybe. Or maybe they'd just have a nicer site that made less money for a year. Our team made a site that made less per visitor, but we felt like it was a better-looking and more useful site. We decided to stick with it and work out the kinks, but ~6 months went by without reaching our old sites' benchmark. There was a ton of pressure on me to make it work or admit defeat and revert. I nearly gave in as the stress built, but eventually revenue surpassed the old site. I later learned that I was almost fired over it. My story has a happy ending, but just barely. I have sympathy for the people making these decisions.

kenko 13y ago
There's a lot of room between "exist to make money" and "must make money in order to exist". Like, a staggering amount of room.
- ksikka 13y ago
  there's also a lot of pressure when you're public
- baddox 13y ago
  I don't really see much of a difference. If a company must make money to continue to exist, then I think it's reasonable to say that company "exists to make money." Of course, that doesn't mean is exists only to make money.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - khafra 13y ago
    The practical difference disappears when your operating margin is 0. When you have money left over after paying your essential expenses, though, you can do stuff. Like, if you're Microsoft and you have 60 billion in cash, you can have a big R&D department that sometimes engages in blue-sky research.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    Do you consider a company like Raspberry Pi or Oxfam to "exist to make money"? They certainly need money to exist.
  - kenko 13y ago
    Lots of bookstores, cafes, antique shops, whatever, are labors of love. And not only things like that. A bakery---a good bakery!---exists to make good bread. It has to sell that bread and cover its costs, etc., in order to do that, but it doesn't exist in order to make the money necessary to cover its costs. If that were why it existed, it would be easier to abandon the end of making good bread!
- pshin45 13y ago
  Exactly, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: "We survive by breathing but we can't say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist."
vra 13y ago
interesting
ampersandy 13y ago
To be fair, revenue could have kept growing with the old design; you still don't know if you've achieved more with the new one!
wisty 13y ago
> Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Hows that working for Yahoo now? Actually, that's kind of disingenuous. Google optimises for less clicks per user, because Google is a site for people who want to get stuff done. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters. And unlike Yahoo, I can't see it ever transitioning to anything other than a time-waster. Time-wasters are basically unprofitable (you're getting clicks from people who are looking to kill time, not find a new insurance policy), but that's what Facebook is. Unless Facebook wants to become the new Linked-In (and they don't - Linked-In just doesn't have the market cap), they just have to be a better time-waster. If Facebook had a lower valuation, they might be able to move to a position where their focus was on serving people doing stuff, not wasting time, but they can't.
- dionidium 13y ago
  Hows that working for Yahoo now? Is that supposed to be snark? I realize they're not fashionable, but Yahoo is still quite successful.
- mehwoot 13y ago
  Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech circles, they are just a business that makes money. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters... Time-wasters are basically unprofitable Yeah, unprofitable to the tune of $600 million a year. That's Yahoo's net profit last year. I swear to god, the blindness of people to anything that's not hip right now is amazing. People assume because they personally stopped caring about something that it must have failed.
  - hrjet 13y ago
    IIRC, they were the top destination 15 years back. They were the default homepage in most browsers. From that spot to "just a business that makes money" is perhaps not the best thing to happen to them. At the same time, I don't think Yahoo is purely money-minded. From what I read, they were the only company which challenged the FISA orders last year (even before the Snowden leaks).
cfontes 13y ago
It happened www.lifehacker.com a few years ago. But I think they really made it worst after the updated UI, I never got back there.

baddox 13y ago

I think I can see both sides. If all meaningful stats you are collecting are going down, I think something is definitely wrong. There are basically three options: 1. Fix/revert the update so that those stats increase again. This is probably the easiest/quickest option, especially the revert, but it obviously sucks to have "wasted" time on the updates. 2. Collect new/more stats that you deem meaningful and see if those have increased. This is the one that I like best from the perspective of a lowly programmer who worked hard on the updates, because it provides the possibility that even though existing stats have worsened, the updates are still empirically better. Of course, it's hard to figure out what new stats to look for, and whether or not to deem them truly meaningful. An oversimplified example would be if all you're looking at is ad conversions, maybe you should start looking at user retention as well, because even if ad conversions decrease, a large increase in retention can in the long (or even short) run lead to more revenue. 3. Ignore the numbers on the prediction that the numbers will increase over time. This one is also appealing, but will and probably should be rejected by management. Something that also needs to be recognized is that "significantly more modern and easier to use" is a subjective claim, and is not necessarily "better" for whatever definition of "better" the company is using.

eevilspock 13y ago

Nearly everyone has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these. IT'S NOT FREE We’re not Facebook’s customers, advertisers are (more on this below). But we are the advertiser’s customers, and the cost of the "free lunch" is simply shifted to the price of the things we buy from them. In other words we still end up paying for the full cost of Facebook (and even more, as I'll get to next). Costs may even shift regressively, to advertised products predominately consumed by those with lower incomes, in which case the poor are subsidizing the better off. IT'S MORE EXPENSIVE... Not only are you still paying for the full cost of the Facebook product you use, you are paying for all the advertising overhead: the costs of its advertising technology and infrastructure (huge, btw), the agency and creative costs (Don Draper and company have to pay for the hookers and scotch somehow, not to mention what’s-his-name who basically just lounges in his office barefoot thinking Japanese), and the advertiser's big marketing departments (that often outnumber and outspend the people making the product!). The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks. – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera So in addition to the original product cost and the ad overhead costs, you are also paying the opportunity cost of an inferior product (as Dennis Curtis points out in the OP) as well as the engineering costs of figuring out how to optimize ad revenue, because that’s what happens when websites have to design to please advertisers over pleasing us, the users. Dalton Caldwell makes this point comparing Sourceforge to Github[1]. As ergo says in a comment[2], “If the new news feed is making their advertisers happy (and bringing revenue into Facebook), then that's what they optimize for.” As jfoster says in a comment[3], “Ad-supported models untie the relationship between UX and revenue.” Furthermore, our identities and privacy are bought and sold to the highest bidders. And where do the bidders get their money? From us of course! A double whammy! We're trading our privacy for free product? Bullshit. We get personalization? Bullshit. Personalization means optimizing something for me, not optimizing for the advertiser. Again, we're not the real customer. We’re certainly not Google’s[4][5]. WAIT. IT'S EVEN WORSE... Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club Think of the social costs of advertising. The web is infested with misinformation and manipulation. Beside the lying ads themselves, relying on a revenue stream entirely dependent on how many ads are seen severely affects the moral choices of those who decide what gets produced and how its presented. What are the costs of a misinformed and variously manipulated citizenry, of distortions to the free-market? Knowledge and discourse are the lifeblood of both democracy, free markets, progress. The web, from the little scammy websites to the big brand ones that so many blindly trust, has a huge influence on who we vote for, what we buy, and most importantly, what we believe. There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. This "free" ad-"supported" web we have is much too expensive. — [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484075 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484442 [4] Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. "They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services," he joked. - Wired, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data/all/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data... [5] Google's once famous clean and neutral search results are now cluttered and biased (http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-actual-google-results-to-bottom-12-of-the-screen/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-...).