Developers of Fedi, have you been asked to implement functions that clearly reduce the functionality of the app or website you contribute to? How do you handle it?

3 years ago by ReallyKinda to c/AskKbin

I have a sense of how these decisions look in the board room— just curious what they look/feel like on implementation given that people presumably don’t enjoy putting in effort to make a thing worse, obviously don’t dox yourself and get in trouble at work!

pezmaker 3 points 3 years ago

I don't know if my experience is normal or not, but I've pretty much only ever been asked to add beneficial functionality. I also don't work in general web consumption so when I'm asked to do something it seems like it's for better function rather than consumer utilization.

A question like this reminds me of back when I was regularly using deadspin and other gawker media when it was bankrupted, sold, and reworked to be an ad and data collection farm. I'd probably have done, what it at least appeared most devs did, and left.

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ReallyKinda 2 points 3 years ago

Yeah I’m kind of wondering if companies tend to outsource the more negative stuff like making privacy settings reset every month (0_o nextdoor) to somewhere geographically distant from HQ so it’s less personal/hard on morale, but I know next to nothing about the industry.

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pezmaker 2 points 3 years ago

In the companies I've worked for, those kind of things just don't happen. But again, my career has been in for software targeted at very specific markets and users and not general consumption for harvesting. Anyone knowing me would know this is me , but... one was a state health department processing communicable disease reports, one was a software maker for window and door manufacturers. The current and previous were built around making the job easier and faster for other employees in the company. So software to support the product, rather than software as the product

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ReallyKinda 2 points 3 years ago

That’s a great distinction between software to support a product or workplace function vs software being sold to consumers or whose main intent is to advertise to and/or data mine consumers like my nextdoor example.

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ReallyKinda 3 points 3 years ago

Hopefully it’s obvious that I’m referring to private/public sector developers who might see this, not people working on developing federated programs:)

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