I understand what you mean, but it does match MBA/mckinsey thinking very closely.

Make a metric a goal, work tirelessly towards that new metric.

Does it make the product better? Well, the product is already made- so it doesn’t make a difference.

It’s only software developers who think a product is never “done”- normal MBA thinking is “we have invested in R&D, now there is a product, how do we get as many users of our product as possible”.

You don't think the reason we have seemingly broken optimization is because poorly thought out metrics are being gamed?

That's all its been for the last few decades. Everyone is now "data driven" and "metrics oriented". That's a footgun - if people can game it, they will, and numbers don't say what people think they say.

Normally I would agree, but I've seen this happen too often. Common sense be damned, just make the number look good.

And then word gets around that you put salt in coffee instead of sugar, and people stop going to you. Unless you’re the only deli in town.

Yea, and that's the reason we pay taxes and tolerate a government, they're supposed to provide a counter force to this apparent corruption.

“In Q2 our P0 goal is to deliver Project Footgun. Your focus on delivering this important goal will put us in a good position to finally fund your favorite tech debt projects.”

Sure, that works for TVs. Less so for things like refrigerators and cars. Getting fixated on one particular market obfuscates the big picture.

I see that we have already entered the post-apocalyptic scavenging stage?

> You can buy a "smart TV" and keep it offline.

For how long? Eventually, it will end up like Windows login. It won't work without an online account. In the meanwhile, they will soft corece you into adopting it by using passive aggression. They will slow down the bootup to a crawl, unless you connect it online. Those times are already really bad - CRT monitors used to heat up faster.

The ultimate point is, if you have to make compromises to retain your rights, then you might as well have no rights at all. You're already well on your way there.

Sadly, you get sometimes forced that "smart stuff" if you want it or not.

Had to order large tv sets at work, got LG ones. Working mostly fine as dumb displays (for some connected device, delivering the pictures and using HDMI ARC to switch on both at once) but here and there, users are put to the home menu of the LG TV if something fails and need to click through some icons to get to the HDMI input and if you dare to connect them online you get that "Update" notification, when an update is available (even when you disabled auto update).

Yes, I should have said "Samsung" rather than Android for that, however I stopped with the Pixels when my Pixel 3 (I think?) received an update which caused buzzing in the earpiece, and every "fix" didn't fix it.

Though I think the 3 received the buggiest updates of any phone ever.

It was the Samsung Android 15 update from earlier this year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/samsunggalaxy/comments/1kjjeqo/how_...