
When preloads go sideways - uggedal
http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/when-preloads-go-sideways
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johansch
A year ago I would have labeled this as deliberate evilness.

Today, after having spent a year in a company that is 97% focused on hardware
(I'm part of the other 3%) - I could quite easily see this happen just out of
ignorance/lack of focus.

My conclusion is that in companies like this:

\- By default they think of the final delivery as a piece of electronics, not
a system of hardware and software.

\- They either consciously or inadvertedly think less of software than of
hardware. Software is an afterthought you add to make the hardware function.

~~~
lotyrin
I don't really like Apple's philosophy all the time, but they get this right
at least, that both the hardware and software matter, and it's enough of a win
that I basically use their devices+software in any category they are present.

What is keeping everyone from figuring this out?

~~~
johansch
Culture. It permeates a company.

The CEO of a hardware company has often risen there from being a junior HW
engineer or researcher. Same story for managers 1-2 steps down. They are often
not competent to hire competent software people on their own. So how could
they begin to change their company, even if they wanted to?

I think it's asymmetric though:

1\. Software people realize and accept that hardware construction is complex.

2\. Many hardware people actually do seem to think that software construction
is trivial in comparison to the what they do themselves.

Especially in SV I also sense a sort of resentment from HW engineers that SW
people nowadays often get paid a lot better. ("For creating dating apps.")

(One difference between software and hardware is that hardware people often
have much "higher" academic credentials - quite a lot of them have PhD's.
Great software people often don't even graduate from university. I could see
how this could make the hardware people think less of the software people.)

