I think that's a direct result of the 'weird' way our economy works: we've moved away from customer satisfaction to investor satisfaction.
Nowadays, companies exist to increase their stock value so their managers get bigger bonuses. You don't get more stock by being better to your customers: ruthlessly firing people also increases your stock value. Putting users first might make your company look not worthy of investment: the market selects for stockholder-first companies.
> I think that's a direct result of the 'weird' way our economy works: we've moved away from customer satisfaction to investor satisfaction.
A lot of this was a consequence of low interest rates. Money didn't come from selling things to customers, it came from selling a story to investors. Now that interest rates are finally above zero it's harder to raise money from investors and businesses will start to remember what it's like to make money from satisfying customers.
And the incumbents who don't realize this may be in for a surprise. What do you do when your business strategy is based on buying up the competition with cheap money and then the cheap money dries up and the competition is willing to sacrifice margins or disavow customer-hostile misfeatures in order to get your market share?
That is an insightful point, and all too true. And it's not just investor satisfaction, but the satisfaction of short-term investors due to the peculiarities of modern derivative trading which emphasizes short-term gains through extremely complex financial abstractions.
Give users control of their data and privacy, moving away from large backend infrastructure, and providing better value to the user. With the bonus of having a more enjoyable development environment and an excited community.
I'm working on this right now. I miss when the user determined how the data was presented. I'm making a minimal, markdown-based document network similar to gemini or gopher.
