News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software. Parent comment

Re:How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software by zimpenfish on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @07:16AM (#16366535)
> On my team, if you're only working the asks handed down from above and not proactively taking initiative to make things better, you're barely pulling your weight.

The problem with a lot of engineers is that "make things better" often doesn't translate into "keeps customers happy and money coming in".

I could work on making our internal software "better" for the next two years but it wouldn't bring in enough money from customers to justify paying me to do it. And I'm smart enough to know that I have zero idea about what will make things "better" for the actual customers.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software by closeparen on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @10:06PM (#16373102)
The customers will eventually suffer a death of a thousand cuts through quality and reliability issues if direct attribution to revenue / customer requests is a requirement to work on anything. But of course you can't rewrite ever time you hear about a new language. Obviously there's a balance, and striking that balance correctly is a huge part of the job.
[ Parent | on HN ]