They buy apps/products that mature and don’t need a lot of work, fire all the workers and hire a skeleton crew to manage them in a cheaper labor market.
They also harvest data from the apps and resell it.
I had a chuckle at that unlikely turn of phrase.
Digital burial business is so apt that I’m stealing it, thanks
I guess most organizational addicts have moved to Notion at this time
Even though I think that the people that apply there have quite low moral/ethical ones.
Out of curiosity, why? It doesn’t seem like these apps are either critical nor need those developers anymore.
You're joining a team of jackals trying to squeeze any money out of users that depend/love a specific product while putting these applications on minimal support.
I just think that at the end of the day it's nicer if you can think you contributed to the world, or even just one user making his life any better, that company just has none of it, it's mission is just plain the opposite.
Just how do you move from there? I helped Bending Spoons squeezing any money left in application X by butchering all non essential features and rising the price 3 times?
I’m looking at the apps in the article and see a private app impersonating NOAA, one to “create stylish, impactful content for social media,” and a series of cheap knock-offs of best-in-class apps. They deserve to exist and make money, and there is no shame in working on them. But it’s hard to argue anyone was responding to a higher calling.
Developers are expensive. It’s hard to argue for geographic premiums on top of that, or maintaining the staff required in a build-up during maintenance or run-down, when WFH has challenged the first and basic economic reality (driven home by positive real interest rates) the latter.
cringe
You have to really try to put in 40 hours of work a week and create negative value but by god they seem like they're best in class.
What's wrong with rightsizing workforce to be commensurate with work?
They wrote "mature and don’t need a lot of work". Why would anyone put lots of people on a product that is mature and doesn't need a lot of work?
> This usually means a degraded customer experience.
Why? If the product is mature, works well, then surely you need fewer people to keep it in good shape and support customers?
I’m pointing out that intent makes a difference. If Bending Spoons plans to put the apps on life support and squeeze out revenue - a fair assumption - then user experience will suffer.
Nobody is suggesting anyone put 'lots of people' on a mature product. However, there are always things that need to be done.
Apps need to be updated for new devices, OS/library/security updates, and general bug reports to name a few. That's just on the app side, the same is true for any build pipelines/hosting infrastructure.
These apps don't run themselves regardless of how mature they are.
You're right in that fewer people are needed and I'm all for optimizing but what I feel like you're missing is that it's quite easy to over-optimize for cost at the expense of users.