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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to be a jerk and I know engineers writing the code don't always make the decisions but the new Apple TV Player was dog shit. Just horrible. 10 steps back in UI/UX and frustrating to use. I've been using Plex for well over a decade and to throw that all away on that new player... Just damn.

Not sure why Plex laid off the team, was it the response to the new updates (doubt it), was it "AI", are they planning on going in a new direction?

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More than likely Plex realizes where their money comes from. It's not streamlining personal video content playback. That's how they built their reputation, but they make their money on integration deals and filling your home screen with other people's content. I paid for Plex Pass and they still feel entitled to put advertisements in front of my local media content. I've since switched to Jellyfin.

I think it's past time we stop letting the doers of an org pass off responsibility for their actions. The engineers coded this. It is on them as much as it's on some nameless exec

I don't agree. There's a limit on how much you can influence things, and as a dev (or product owner or whatever) you need to pick your battles.

How a decision is made, what gets released etc. are all opaque processes and blaming the devs from the outside is not productive.

That said, I'm all for it for devs becoming more responsible for the end result, evaluated within the org boundaries. Especially these days when people tend to cop out with "oh cloude did it / didn't catch it" responses (before, it was "oh I had to come up with something quick and couldn't check everything").

It is usually an exec with a name, just like engineers have name.

Quality is achieved by process - testing, coherent requirements etc. Individual engineer cant change those.

Unless they're founding engineers, engineers are exployed to work on what a company wants. If the company wants to cut corners in exchange for something else, their only usual options are cutting corners indeed, or quitting.

I don't mind the new UI for the Apple TV app, however there's a new bug where pressing pause can cause playback to completely freeze up. I keep hearing people talk about how software has taken a nose dive in quality now, and haven't really experienced it but if this Apple TV app update was AI heavy driven and real developers were laid off it might be my first experience with it.

> Not sure why Plex laid off the team, was it the response to the new updates (doubt it), was it "AI", are they planning on going in a new direction?

Pure speculation - maybe it was the kind of response you're definitely not hoping for. Get ready for more dog shit apps :)

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