[HN Gopher] Staying opinionated as you grow
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Staying opinionated as you grow
Author : hlassiege
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-11-05 14:07 UTC (5 days ago)
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| jdpage wrote:
| Point of order: "enshittification" does not mean what the
| author's using it to mean. It does not just mean "the product got
| worse". It means "the product was purposefully made worse in
| order to capture additional value from the customer," i.e. a rug
| pull.
|
| Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd hate to see such a useful term
| for corporate malfeasance diluted.
| mvkel wrote:
| Yep. The irony being that "enshittification," properly
| deployed, can actually lead a company to even more success.
| Product people always think "having the best product" wins the
| day, but there are billions of dollars made through a perfectly
| baked enshittified pie.
| gwd wrote:
| "The Market for Lemons" has always been a thing. If the user
| can't immediately distinguish between "Looks good at first
| and is good all the way through" and "Looks good and gets
| crappier as you go along", then both will be forced by the
| market to charge the same amount; but the latter one can
| afford to do it at a price the former can't afford.
| topaz0 wrote:
| That's also not what "enshittification" was coined to
| describe.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Success for the shareholders, or for the paying customers?
| joshbuddy wrote:
| Well, Cory recently said in a podcast we can use it to mean
| "product got worse", so I've become less pedantic on this point
| fwiw. (I think it was in the episode of Adam Conover from about
| a month ago)
| jdpage wrote:
| Hmm. I am tentatively holding to my position, because I think
| it's useful to have a separate word, but I'll go track down
| the episode and see if he elaborates on that further. Thanks!
| cdoctorow wrote:
| This is specifically what I've written on the subject (I
| quote this in the book):
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-
| toi...
|
| > The fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its
| theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a
| feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term
| "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something
| that is bad," without bothering to learn - or apply - the
| theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means
| for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its
| own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely
| and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more
| theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million
| normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to
| live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and
| obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise,
| theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its
| usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders.
| Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a
| self-limiting move - it would be a self-inflicted wound.
| jdpage wrote:
| ... argument withdrawn.
|
| I suppose if I want to use the word to mean the original
| sense, I need to include clarification that that's what
| I'm doing. I'll have to think of how best to do that
| without coming across as judgy or condescending, since
| that's sort of police-y (and also just unpleasant).
| uoaei wrote:
| Invent a new word ;)
|
| Entropy in action, eh?!
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Cory recently said in a podcast we can use it to mean
| "product got worse"_
|
| Of course we can. We can also use it mean "product became
| wonderful".
|
| The question, as always, is if we should.
| hlassiege wrote:
| I get the impression I hit a sensitive spot with my use of
| "enshittification" :)
|
| Sorry about that. I realize this term has a very strict meaning
| in English, but it's a bit less true in my language (French).
|
| I responded to this in another comment above, but basically I
| was using the term to encompass everything that contributes to
| degrading a product. Everything that makes it more complex,
| often tied to company growth (I started a company in 2012
| that's now 700 people).
|
| But I get the point. I see this touches on another topic around
| corporate malpractice. I honestly wasn't even aware of that.
|
| Now I know :)
| moravak1984 wrote:
| Yes, pedantry is justified in this case.
|
| Froggies doing wrong cultural appropriation again... maybe the
| "Emilia Perez syndrome" is becoming a thing.
| supportengineer wrote:
| There's another flavor of enshittification where _no one_
| benefits, but the product manager got a promotion.
| randomdrake wrote:
| Defending focus is way harder than adding features.
|
| When you're building, adding yet another feature can sometimes
| shave off all the edges that made you successful in the first
| place.
|
| Same with messaging. The more you try to sound universal, the
| less anyone hears you.
|
| Strong opinions that are honestly held and communicated are such
| great signs of respect. It's refreshing to see: "This is who we
| are. If it's not for you, that's okay."
|
| Good piece.
| mvkel wrote:
| It was a let down to be bought into the "hook" that saying no,
| taking focus, is the key to continued long term success as a
| scaled company, only for it to devolve into how courageous it is
| to have a simple homepage.
|
| I wanted to read a new story; one about an internal debate where
| the easy answer was to "just do it," but a hard no is what
| actually saved everything.
|
| Surely that story exists.
| hlassiege wrote:
| You're right. I wrote this quickly after talking with Thomas,
| and the homepage example reminded me of these scalability
| issues I faced with my previous company (Malt).
|
| I connected it to simplicity and focus. In my head the link was
| clear, but I get that it's not as obvious when written :)
|
| I'm using this blog as a kind of journal--short posts, quick
| thoughts. So I totally understand if it leaves you wanting
| more.
|
| Honestly didn't expect this much traffic, my other posts have
| just been read by friends ^^
| pettertb wrote:
| "They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users, new
| needs, address every edge case."
|
| That is not what enshittification is about, and not who it is
| about. You don't enshittify to please users, you do it to please
| shareholders.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| At one point the user to please becomes a stakeholder, the need
| is a metric that needs to go up, the edge case is legislation
| or a specific need. From a user's point of view, services like
| Spotify or Slack have been stagnant for a decade, but I'm sure
| that in the background they've been doing work costing hundreds
| of millions in investments and developer time.
| markerz wrote:
| While I think I understand your point, there's probably a few
| ways to look at this.
|
| One is many products start out pleasing most users, but pivots
| to enterprise customers because of revenue. Thus, the product
| shifts heavily towards the enterprise use-case of a few
| customers at the loss of most small-medium users. Getting more
| users in this enterprise world means making changes to
| accommodate special needs and that leads to entropy.
|
| Another new need is to hit next quarters revenue targets, so
| companies find more juice to squeeze somewhere.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Those things can happen, sure, but GP is saying that the term
| "enshittification" was coined to describe a very specific
| kind of phenomenon about monopoly internet platforms and
| their pattern of first building dependency and market power
| before becoming maximally extractive. It's not supposed to be
| about just any generic way that software might get worse for
| its users.
|
| Arguably it was a poor choice of word, but some of us would
| still like to be able to refer to that specific phenomenon.
| hlassiege wrote:
| Fair point. I realize that "enshittification" has a more
| specific meaning in English (I'm french). My bad I was using it
| in a broader sense, connecting it to my previous company (700
| people, I co-founded it in 2012).
|
| I was thinking more about all the factors that increase product
| complexity, and it's far from being just about shareholders:
|
| * The more people you add to a company, the more complexity you
| add because inherently, everyone wants to leave their mark. In
| the end, some people see themselves grow because they
| contributed to this or that new feature. Doesn't matter if it's
| redundant. Doesn't matter if 10 months later you realize it
| adds nothing. I've unfortunately seen this pattern repeat
| itself over and over.
|
| * The bigger a company gets, the more it needs to respond to
| increasingly specific use cases. A salesperson tells you their
| client needs this. Customer support tells you a portion of your
| users are asking for that. Either you have enough perspective
| to say it doesn't fit your vision, or you don't, and you try to
| please everyone. But it's a huge source of complexity. And I
| could cite tons of examples from my old company.
|
| And just to be transparent, I am using my blog as a journal,
| with short posts. I was not expecting that much traffic and I
| totally understand that it's maybe not as deep as you would
| expect ^^
| topaz0 wrote:
| If you're interested in the specific thing that other people
| mean by that word, the original Cory Doctorow essay that
| coined it is well worth a read:
| https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
|
| Of course he followed it up with a book, so there's that as
| well if you want a deeper dive, but the essay is fairly
| comprehensive at least in laying out what he intends by the
| term.
| btilly wrote:
| This brings to mind the Tony Hsieh quote, "You show what your
| values really are by the opportunities you turn down."
|
| All successful startups are fighting a battle against entropy.
| And entropy is becoming indistinguishable from all the other
| companies out there. Which means losing what made them succeed in
| the first place.
|
| This is why company culture is important. You need to know what
| your values are. And then you need to maintain them. Even at the
| cost of the wrong short-term profitable opportunities.
| bitbasher wrote:
| > "You show what your values really are by the opportunities
| you turn down."
|
| That aged well...
| btilly wrote:
| True, the pressure on him to be some sort of guru of
| happiness lead to an experiment that turned out tragically.
|
| But that doesn't invalidate the importance of the principles
| on which Zappos succeeded under his leadership.
|
| It is a mistake to dismiss key insights merely because they
| come from someone who had human flaws. We all have human
| flaws, and we all make mistakes.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > You show what your values really are by the opportunities you
| turn down.
|
| This reads more like some corporate-aimed PR than earnest words
| that left the mouth of a human
| watwut wrote:
| It is actually true. If you have an option to defraud people
| and dont take it, then you actually have "not defrauding" as
| a value.
|
| If you take bigger salary in exchange of defrauding people,
| say by denying insurance payment to people who should have
| it, you dont have "not defrauding" as a value.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Are there there any good studies on this topic? I find that
| most people's morals are far too flexible when put to the
| test.
| StrangeDoctor wrote:
| While it's true it also seems kinda worthless through broad
| applicability and ties moral values to power or money,
| which I don't think many people would agree with.
|
| Every US president since FDR would have "not killing
| everyone" as a value by not hitting the big red button.
| Almost nobody else will get to be tested in that way. Is
| that actually a value?
|
| There is also a private information problem. If it never
| occurred to me to defraud investors, but it was
| retroactively discovered I could have (and gotten away with
| it?), do I get the "doesn't defraud" value? Does the more
| evil version of me get the value, as long as they thought
| of it but didn't act on it?
| dns_snek wrote:
| > Every US president since FDR would have "not killing
| everyone" as a value by not hitting the big red button.
|
| This doesn't apply, your morals are only tested once you
| have to sacrifice something that you find valuable in
| order to uphold your morals, whether that is money,
| power, or something else.
| btilly wrote:
| And yet, they left the mouth of a human.
|
| The point that he was explaining when I saw the quote was why
| the hiring process at Zappos had a "culture fit" part of the
| interview process. Because you can't maintain a culture, if
| you have employees who aren't aligned on values. Maintaining
| this requires passing up on opportunities to hire people who
| will be productive, because you think that they will
| undermine the culture.
|
| The importance of culture as a value to the organization is
| demonstrated by passing up on opportunities that would
| undermine it. Even if those opportunities are otherwise good.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| The semantics are fine, putting aside the bullshit about
| corporate culture. It just sounds like a press release
| rather than natural language. The key signal here is
| "opportunities".
| btilly wrote:
| The human in question was a CEO for around 20 years.
| People who spend that long in the C-suite absorb a
| certain amount of corporate language.
|
| And while you may consider corporate culture to be
| bullshit, others don't. Where others includes every
| entrepreneur who built a large company that I've ever
| seen speak on the subject.
|
| I've been lucky enough to see good versus bad corporate
| cultures first hand. So I also fit into that other
| bucket. Though admittedly more looking at the issue from
| somewhere near the bottom, rather than the view from the
| top.
| neom wrote:
| Moisey Uretsky who effectively came up with the idea for and made
| most of the foundational "cannot touch" choices at DigitalOcean
| basically said for a long time we were not allowed to add
| anything to the control panel, period. He really didn't even want
| us moving stuff around too much. I seem to recall, although I
| could be misremembering, when we hired Jesse Chase (amazing hire)
| who was our first everything visual guy, it was _somewhat_
| contentious, he was bought in, but man, Moisey was adamant it
| stayed extremely simple. We had a lot of heated debate, but I
| always appreciated this, I thought it was a good rule of thumb -
| if it ain 't br0ked don't fix it basically. I've not used
| DigitalOcean in a very long time, fingers crossed it's still
| simple and easy to use! :)
| zkmon wrote:
| Depends on what you want to build. You can build a simple screw
| driver without any attachments, to keep it simple and have very
| specific usecase. You can also build a swiss army knife with 20
| tools packed in it. Both have their own market.
|
| A better example: What is a smart phone? It does hundred things
| for which there were special tools for each those usecases. But
| the phone killed all those super-simple, opinionated, single-
| purpose tools.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users,
| new needs, address every edge case.
|
| No, they get shitty because businesses need to move the needle.
| Product people and engineers want to put things that "show" they
| did that on their resume.
|
| Want to get to market rate? Then do a project that will get you
| your next job. That isnt going to be exclusively for the company,
| thats going to be as much for you as it is for them.
|
| The fundamental problem is that if you aren't upping your staff's
| salary to market rates, you're forcing them to do the above.
| Without the money, your interests DO NOT ALIGN.
|
| This results in some people having very strange opinions about
| work (clock punching) and doing the minimum to get by. It results
| in strange corporate polices where incompetence starts to blend
| in with the furniture and no one knows how to get them "unstuck".
| uoaei wrote:
| Growth of enterprise is exclusively a "pleasing new customers"
| thing. That is growth in today's economy, they are inextricable.
| This is and always be an impediment to your "opinions" as long as
| you lead a company whose primary goal is "grow". The post sets up
| the premise at the beginning and then proceeds in complete
| ignorance of this fact.
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