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Why is everything going to shit? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Was just trying to explain to someone why everything is going to shit, specifically companies, and realized, I don't fully get it either.

I've got the following explanation. The sentences marked with "???" are were I'm lost. Anyone mind telling me, if they're correct and if so, why?

The past few years, central banks were giving out interest rates of 0% or even negative percentages. Regular banks would not quite pass this on, but you could still loan money and give it back later with no real interest payments.

This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn't have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???

This has stopped being the case, as central banks are hiking interest rates again, to combat inflation???

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[+] [email protected] -8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Actually this is because quality of engineering goes down. Noone seems to be able to design a good user interface. My theory is it's because the new generation of designers are rised on Facebook and Twitter. They never saw a good, clean UI in their lives.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's a statement that obviously comes from someone who has never worked in this sector.

The real issues here are:

Most companies are far too cheap to actually employ a designer. The Windows 8 flat design was made that way, because they saved on designer costs and the flat design meant that managers could do the design themselves using Powerpoint only.
Companies pay for features. UX is usually not a feature but an afterthought.
When the design looks so outdated that it starts affecting sales, companies bring in contractor designers who have no clue about the product and tell them to "please fix the design". Since they are only on the product for a very short time, they have no idea what the non-obvious requirements are. Instead they focuse on making everything look pretty and modern, because that's what they are paid for. Their customer is the clueless boss who thinks shiny is gold, not the person using the product in the end.

Also:

UX design is a real job with it's own requirements and education. That's not something a programmer will "just pick up". This needs to be learned.
Managers tend to have their fingers a lot into UI/UX, because that's what they can see. Most of them have no clue about technical stuff, so they generally leave the programmers alone to do their job when it comes to logic, but they mess about a lot with the visual stuff. Generally speaking, if you ask a manager about a complete rehaul of the logic, they only ask about how urgent it is and how much it will cost. But when it comes to the color of a button, they will have a lot to say about that. And this shines through, as many managers honestly have no clue about what they are doing. There are rare exceptions to that rule, but that are usually managers with a technical background. Managers who just have a business degree are poison for software development.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You'd be surprised how much engineering goes in to designing a product to be as cheap as possible without being literal garbage. It seems like everything sold on Amazon is right on the line these days.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As a UX designer this is some of the dumbest shit I have read in a while. There are countless things that can lead to a shitty interface and most of it has to do with money/intervention from other stakeholders which is out of our hands.