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Why be cynical? That's engineering. Real engineering is about materials, cost and time (if you leave one of those out, you're either doing research or just aiml

by kabdib 11y ago

Why be cynical? That's engineering. Real engineering is about materials, cost and time (if you leave one of those out, you're either doing research or just aimlessly puttering around ... maybe both :-) ). There are other dimensions, too. In the consumer market, engineering is also about the reliability that you want your customers to experience. Companies that make console hardware want you to be happy; they're not going to ship you a hunk of hardware that generates a Warranty Expired Interrupt at one-year-and-one-day because they want you to keep buying games and services. Having to buy a new console is a hassle. Maybe you'll buy the competitor's console instead, who knows? On the other hand, console margins (and yes, generally they have margins these days and are not sold at a loss) are razor thin. There are knife-fights in meetings over three cent changes to components because at production scale those pennies rapidly turn into millions of dollars. You don't make a console with a reliability of 20 years because it would cost way too much and be obsolete long before the failure curve started to inflect. So you optimize the product lifetime for user expectation of value, how long you think the technology will remain relevant, what the market will bear, and a bunch of other things (chip sourcing, cost of manufacture, architectural headroom and so on). This involves hard-won experience, spreadsheets, testing, figuring out how vendors are lying to you, plane trips to godforsaken industrial parks, and fist-fights in hallways. It's awesome :-) Are there companies selling stuff that will break the moment the warranty is over, or earlier? Sure; they are betting that actually getting warranty service is so inconvenient that you won't bother. On the other hand, having watched (from the outside!) the execution of a product-recall-scale warranty, I was impressed with the company's professionalism, and it didn't strike me as a company that didn't care about repeat customers. It sucks on both sides for something like this to happen, but there's very little cyncism involved.

mhb 11y ago
Yes, that's all true and the use of the word cynical here is more nuanced. GP seemed to be impressed that a company was producing a quality product as an end in itself - providing consumer surplus for not necessarily any benefit to the company. A more cynical view is that they are doing that because it will produce a better outcome for them as well. Yes, it's a beautiful system and everyone wins, but, generally, altruism would be viewed as a higher motive than self-interest. I can provide a different and less cynical interpretation for your example too. Companies that sell stuff that only lasts until the warranty is over are providing a valuable service for customers who don't want to pay as much as they would have to for a higher quality product which would outlast its warranty.

by kabdib 11y ago

mhb 11y ago

Yes, that's all true and the use of the word cynical here is more nuanced. GP seemed to be impressed that a company was producing a quality product as an end in itself - providing consumer surplus for not necessarily any benefit to the company. A more cynical view is that they are doing that because it will produce a better outcome for them as well. Yes, it's a beautiful system and everyone wins, but, generally, altruism would be viewed as a higher motive than self-interest. I can provide a different and less cynical interpretation for your example too. Companies that sell stuff that only lasts until the warranty is over are providing a valuable service for customers who don't want to pay as much as they would have to for a higher quality product which would outlast its warranty.