Ask HN: I think these FAANG companies should downsize "new features department"

2 points by virologist 4 years ago | 5 comments

Recently I am seeing more and more unnecessary product features from these big companies (especially Microsoft & co) that keep shipping annoying and often unnecessary features. I sometimes wonder if they even use these features (I will give you a recent example, an update to an email client added a default emoji for a work email reply, when I checked latest updates to the version emoji was on the list!).

I feel that this is because the employees at these already established companies need to keep shipping features to stay at the job. Or maybe need to downsize on SE and hire more DevOps.

Are SE in these already established companies required to keep shipping features continually?

What is your opinion on this?

beardyw 4 years ago |

The problem is that management is done by human beings who, by their nature, find it difficult to think rationally, and even if they do, their manager doesn't.

I ran a one man side project for 10 years. I made money from it, but after 2 years I came to realise my brilliant innovations weren't going to make any difference except to give me support headaches. I stopped making any change which wasn't necessary, and got on with my life.

trinovantes 4 years ago |

Your resume would get pretty barren if all you do is fixing bugs. Shipping features/products is how you get promoted.

thesuperbigfrog 4 years ago | |

>> Your resume would get pretty barren if all you do is fixing bugs. Shipping features/products is how you get promoted.

Counterpoint: If you don't fix enough bugs, you won't have any customers. Customers don't care about new features or products if they are buggy messes that don't work correctly.

virologist's commentary and question to the community is whether it makes sense for FAANG companies to ship so many new features when many of them offer little core product value.

virologist 4 years ago | |

I understand the incentive and pressing need from the dev perspective. but shouldn't the management say "no this feature is an overhead".

trinovantes 4 years ago | | |

If management plans to work at the company for life, sure. But with average tenures in the 2-4 years, they're also incentivized to ship new products/features.