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[return to "Brother have gotten to where they are now by not innovating"]
1. aljgz+u4[view] [source] 2023-11-27 08:23:53
>>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.

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2. jbreck+mb[view] [source] 2023-11-27 09:10:54
>>aljgz+u4
If you think about it the growth mindset is quite psychotic.

Imagine a human being with a growth mindset. He optimises his bodyfat to the point of anorexia. He optimises conversations by extracting knowledge then moving on. His diet is pure protein shakes and broccoli. Every morning he does six Leetcode Hards. If you met him you'd think he was deranged.

This growth ideology means every company we interact with behaves like Bob. Soon enough this Bobism filters into people through the labour market and professional values. (Like the Leetcoders). It's alienating and the only purpose it serves is an investment based economy with unclear benefits to society at large

It creates a very strange world where we have computers acting like people and people acting like machines

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3. baoluo+yu[view] [source] 2023-11-27 11:48:09
>>jbreck+mb
I feel like you have presented a straw man argument for what a growth mindset is when it comes to individual people. You have taken extreme behaviours and ascribed them to a growth mindset, which I would disagree with.

I would expect a growth mindset as applied to health and fitness would recognise short term versus long term benefits. Maintaining a healthy bodyweight decreases the risk of all cause mortality. Losing weight to the point of anorexia would cause numerous potential problems, and quickly be recognised as not ideal and a different approach applied.

Optimising conversations only for maximum knowledge extraction is not a valid approach within the broader goal of optimising social interactions to maintain a healthy group of friends and family who you enjoy spending time with and can depend upon for years to come.

A diet of pure protein shakes and broccoli is clearly not in line with any reasonable approach to a healthy diet which instead should aim to have a broad a varied source of nutrients, again with the goal of maintaining long term health and supporting whatever sports/training/activities the person takes part in.

A programmer/software engineer who is serious about improving their craft would be much better served by taking a holistic view of their role and expanding their knowledge and expertise to a much broader set of skills than just algorithms and data structures.

Your hypothetical deranged person I would argue is operating under the exact opposite of a growth mindset.

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4. jbreck+gG[view] [source] 2023-11-27 13:13:50
>>baoluo+yu
I think you are hung up on some careless phrasing on my part.

I'm lambasting the "growth strategy" that leads companies to release worse products via over-optimisation. I am pointing out how this sort of 'growth strategy' would lead to absurd behaviours if a human applied the same logic.

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5. kibwen+i51[view] [source] 2023-11-27 15:36:09
>>jbreck+gG
FWIW, I call this "the virus mentality". Growth at all costs, even if it means the death of the host.
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