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I agree that the engineers (a) probably understood it was a bad design, but (b) were told to do it that way and to ship it. But it's still cravenly bad design.

by kabdib 13y ago

I agree that the engineers (a) probably understood it was a bad design, but (b) were told to do it that way and to ship it. But it's still cravenly bad design. I'll bet twenty dollars that people are going to be doing regular DDOS attacks against that Samsung server now, and that Samsung will have a ton of trouble keeping their TVs functional. You're correct that data centers don't catch on fire very often (cable cuts are lots more frequent), but that's not the interesting failure mode now. Bored script kiddies and blackmail are going to be next. A week of schedule slip (if that) is going to translate into a bunch of bad publicity and upset customers because of expedience. This may not be pretty. [I'm wondering what the firmware update story for these TVs is. Is it secure? Is it reliable? Is it a crappy user experience? Can you update the firmware at all?]

ryandrake 13y ago
You know, as an end user, I'm getting kind of tired of the "The engineers were told to do it wrong by those mean, nasty managers! It's not their fault!" excuse. The people writing this software are presumably grown-ups--professionals who need to start taking some responsibility for the crap they shovel out into the world. If a construction engineer built an apartment building that he knew was going to fall over, his PE license could be suspended or revoked. It doesn't matter who told him to do it.
- kabdib 13y ago
  Managers control reviews, and money. So that'd be a way to vote with your feet (by quitting). In most companies, engineers don't control what gets shipped. There is no way to say "No, you can't ship this," and the product is going out with crappy quality because of a ship date. It comes down to how companies determine software quality, and how much they care. In really bad cases, nobody can tell that the software is terrible. In truly horrible cases, everyone knows the software is crap, but they ship it anyway because they don't care. In any case, "getting professional" in some companies would mean losing your job.

by kabdib 13y ago

ryandrake 13y ago

You know, as an end user, I'm getting kind of tired of the "The engineers were told to do it wrong by those mean, nasty managers! It's not their fault!" excuse. The people writing this software are presumably grown-ups--professionals who need to start taking some responsibility for the crap they shovel out into the world. If a construction engineer built an apartment building that he knew was going to fall over, his PE license could be suspended or revoked. It doesn't matter who told him to do it.

kabdib 13y ago
Managers control reviews, and money. So that'd be a way to vote with your feet (by quitting). In most companies, engineers don't control what gets shipped. There is no way to say "No, you can't ship this," and the product is going out with crappy quality because of a ship date. It comes down to how companies determine software quality, and how much they care. In really bad cases, nobody can tell that the software is terrible. In truly horrible cases, everyone knows the software is crap, but they ship it anyway because they don't care. In any case, "getting professional" in some companies would mean losing your job.