zlacker

>>anothe+(OP)
The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that.

What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty. This is happening to almost every tech company, and the exceptions are rare gems.

In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons.

I made a mistake of buying another Samsung product after years. Never again. I made a mistake of buying another HP product, never again. I might still consider Dell only because of how well they supported me with their monitor flicker.

None of these products have a defect that's caused by poor design, programming, or manufacturing. They all suffer from growth-obsessed mindset.

Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed.

>>aljgz+u4
There's an interesting cultural element to this, and I think Brother being a Japanese company is not a coincidence. I see the same mindset applied widely here in the German Mittelstand.

The American growth at all costs mindset (particularly quarterly) is excellent during the technology exploration phase. It spurs radical innovation, but as a technology matures it becomes impossible to meet growth expectations. In response to this the spiral of Enshittification kicks off and eventually the company and it's products fade into irrelevance. Stability in such an environment is impossible (the gain knob is cranked to the max).

The German Mittelstand are different, typically they are much slower to innovate during the technology exploration phase (I think mostly due to the German economy not really rewarding early stage innovation). However as a technology matures the Mittelstand's strength in stable, gradual evolution and refinement really shines. They focus on being the best in their niche and grow by expanding to new markets, opening adjacent product lines etc. Enshittification is the last thing on their minds (the system is critically/over damped).