My dad is restoring a 1969 MG Midget. The right turn signal stopped working. Using nothing more than a voltmeter, I found a disconnected wire and a short to the frame.
I replaced the entire length of wire that was failing with $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing.
The lesson here is repairability and simplicity.
We’re constantly lectured to be “environmentally aware” by companies that no longer ensure their products will last a lifetime. There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. My Brother printer is nearing 12 years and is still on the same damn print cartridge. My Neato robotics vacuum has had countless parts replaced and is about the same age.
If you truly want to be a good steward of the earth, stop demanding/consuming latest and greatest, endless product and UI refreshes, and instead demand 30+ years out of a product (with small repairs).
Some could argue that Brother printers adhere to the POSIX / UNIX philosophy: Solve one problem only, and solve it well.
In the end it somewhat boils down to pure greed. Instead of stabilizing production costs and/or reusing generic components to ease up manufacturing and repair - HP, Epson, Canon, Dell, Samsung, Kyocera and others try to hype their products with whatever tech stack is currently in trend. "growth hacking" is literally their job description.
There eventually will be a ChatGPT printer on the market. It's inevitable due to what kind of people manage a printer business: It's not the type of people that know how to build printers anymore.
I have had a Brother laser printer for 11 years. I am legitimately on my second toner cartridge. I try to tell family and friends not to bother with inkjet printers but they don’t listen.
My dad’s big fancy Cannon photo printer has caused him nothing but grief. He swears up and down he needs to be able to print large-format full color photographs, but I have never seen him do so. What I have seen is his black cartridge dry out between uses and fail when he needs to print a form.
My wife is occasionally frustrated by our inability to print color, but I am more than happy to drive to Walgreens or my companies office to print a color item once every couple months. An inkjets ink would’ve dried between prints.
We have 2 brothers for our small business, one as the main and the other as a backup (which we have also brought with us when traveling). We are heavy users, probably >10k pages every year, but we have only replaced the drum once and have successfully ignored the "optical photoconductor life over" message for nearly 2 years.
Once a new cartridge failed ("not recognized" error even though it was purchased through Staples) and the brother support person walked me through some secret squirrel reset code which I of course saved for future use. The fact I could get someone from the company on the line to help me was a rare experience for tech companies.
My only gripe with the toner cartridges is the requirement to enter a serial number to get a recycling mailing label. The serial numbers are miniscule.
Our 7 year old brother laser printer finally got its first cartridge replacement last year :) We don't print much, but that's the point, we just leave it sitting there, and when we want to print, it prints. Never had a problem with it in 7 years!
One of the best purchases I have ever made is my Brother laser jet. I’m still on my first toner cartridge after three years. It works every time and never complains or updates.
I've got a Samsung laser printer that was gifted to me when I started post-secondary 13 years ago. Still chugging right along. Never had a hiccup with it. Windows finds the drivers without issue on a new OS install (I have drivers backed up just in case).
No colour printing, but who cares. We do the same thing as you. When we want some photos printed (usually for distribution to family), it's no major hassle to get them printed at the local office supply.
I feel like I bought the last good HP LaserJet that was ever made.
Many years ago, I spotted an HP Color LaserJet Pro m254dw online at Costco and bought it. It's been a fantastic printer. The toner never dries out, "empty cartridges" don't prevent it from printing. It is modern enough that I can use AirPrint to print to it, but old-school enough that it has an ethernet port. The supplies status page basically says "Just because it's at 0% doesn't mean you can't print, but maybe buy a new toner cartridge and replace it when the output gets bad." It didn't require any special drivers, there's no need to link an HP account, and it has a usable web-based management interface.
So far I have the following complaints about the printer:
* After some large amount of uptime (3mo? 6mo? I'm not sure) it won't respond to print requests. Rebooting it fixes the issue.
* Toner cartridges are expensive. I priced out something like $450CAD for a set of the three colour cartridges. I'm still on the starter cartridges and, even though they're "empty", the output quality is fine.
* The word "Color" in the product name is not properly localized to the Canadian market.
Obviously I'm grasping at straws as far as complaints go!
Honestly, this thing feels like I found a unicorn. I've been looking for a similar printer for my parents, but I haven't found anything from HP that ticks all of the boxes. The next one for them will likely be a Brother.
Buying a black/white only brother laser printer solved all my printing problems.
Cartridges last for thousand of pages; no strange cloud requirements; the FritzBox registers the printer immediately and all devices in the local net can print.
Non of this was the case for my previous HP or Epson printers…
One of the worst offenses I've ever seen as an example of this is this trend with newer refrigerators (which I'm sure will brick after 2-3 years when the manufacturer stops supporting the software) where they have a camera inside that projects to a screen on the door. Cool, you can see what food is inside the refrigerator!
Do you know how else you can do that? by opening the door. We need to stop "innovating" features that absolutely no one needs, because clearly the result isn't a better product, just a messier, more complex one that is frequently over-engineered and under-supported.
I saw a fridge that had an app so you could control it from anywhere.
My requirements for a fridge are remarkably simple, to the point the only practical use I could think of an app was alarm that I'd left the door open or something.
(If this particular app did have a door-open alarm, it wasn't on the list of features. It did say you could adjust the temperature from your office. A location I'm often worrying about the fridge.)
My Brother printer is one of my better purchases to be honest. I sound like a complete shill, but it's connected to wifi (and it just happily connects even if it's been off for a month or two), and all devices can just connect to it and print. Never need to reconnect or do anything with it. It's a printer that prints. I love it.
The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that.
What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty. This is happening to almost every tech company, and the exceptions are rare gems.
In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons.
I made a mistake of buying another Samsung product after years. Never again. I made a mistake of buying another HP product, never again. I might still consider Dell only because of how well they supported me with their monitor flicker.
None of these products have a defect that's caused by poor design, programming, or manufacturing. They all suffer from growth-obsessed mindset.
Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed.
> In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons.
This! Each and every time I see an Instagram link I avoid clicking on it for the same click/login capture nonsense. If they opened it up for views only with out logging in, I'd probably actually end up using the service. Short-term protectionist strategies like these will be etched into the gravestone of Meta/Facebook.
It's not just a "growth" mindset; it's "this quarter's growth" mindset. Short-term goals that give short-term results while making long-term results predictably worse. Not a problem for a particular executive: they will move on to work on something else, and are not going to be hurt by the fallout.
But if this strategy underperforms as badly as we as customers feel it does, it will eventually drive its perpetrators from the market. If they think that their positions are unassailable, let them remember how the unassailable GMC and Ford felt in 2000s.
The thing is, there is a ceiling with SaaS products. You can usually hit it within 5 years of starting. That ceiling is entirely controlled by churn, with 0% churn, you go to the moon, but nobody has 0% churn.
Once you hit that ceiling, the only reasonable thing is to focus on churn, not growth (as it will have the most impact). But that is like explaining that a "circular line on a map is actually a straight line" they say they get it, but they still see a circular line.
> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that.
Kent Beck calls this the Explore and Extract phases (with the middle phase being Expand). I'm not sure if you had this talk in mind as you were writing your comment, but if not I think it'll resonate with you.
Somewhat pedantic comment: the phrase "growth mindset" is also psychology jargon that refers to the fact that many skills are more learnable than most people realize. It contrasts with a "fixed mindset" where people assume you have to work with what you've got.
Just wanted to point that out so people don't get confused between the healthy idea of being able to grow and the idea you're addressing, which is more like a compulsion for businesses to grow economically.
There's an interesting cultural element to this, and I think Brother being a Japanese company is not a coincidence. I see the same mindset applied widely here in the German Mittelstand.
The American growth at all costs mindset (particularly quarterly) is excellent during the technology exploration phase. It spurs radical innovation, but as a technology matures it becomes impossible to meet growth expectations. In response to this the spiral of Enshittification kicks off and eventually the company and it's products fade into irrelevance. Stability in such an environment is impossible (the gain knob is cranked to the max).
The German Mittelstand are different, typically they are much slower to innovate during the technology exploration phase (I think mostly due to the German economy not really rewarding early stage innovation). However as a technology matures the Mittelstand's strength in stable, gradual evolution and refinement really shines. They focus on being the best in their niche and grow by expanding to new markets, opening adjacent product lines etc. Enshittification is the last thing on their minds (the system is critically/over damped).
If you think about it the growth mindset is quite psychotic.
Imagine a human being with a growth mindset. He optimises his bodyfat to the point of anorexia. He optimises conversations by extracting knowledge then moving on. His diet is pure protein shakes and broccoli. Every morning he does six Leetcode Hards. If you met him you'd think he was deranged.
This growth ideology means every company we interact with behaves like Bob. Soon enough this Bobism filters into people through the labour market and professional values. (Like the Leetcoders). It's alienating and the only purpose it serves is an investment based economy with unclear benefits to society at large
It creates a very strange world where we have computers acting like people and people acting like machines
> At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that
Yes! What I see instead is a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mindset. Its everywhere I see. I wish there was a way to see and fix this before its too late.
The right way to treat your loyal customers is also micro-intangible, hard to show clear numbers and so does not bear any rewards for a manager taking this approach. Instead, the opposite of screwing loyal customers for new ones is rampant, easy to cook up numbers and so amply rewarded not just limited to tech companies.
Unless the same management chain is responsible for new customers and leaving ones, this is an internal conflict of interest and its effects only show at the macro level.
I've seen many once-popular restaurants go this route, losing long time repeat customers who prefer well priced, familiar drinks and dishes over hit or miss exotic overpriced ones. They don't complain, they just stop coming back.
Car manufacturers, Appliance manufacturers, Food chains, Internet Service Providers, Telcos, tech startups are all guilty of this. Factions at MS, Goog, AAPL too are guilty.
Exceptions here are really really rare. I've never bought a brother printer, but it will be my next.
> Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed.
Exactly. We have two new Brother multifunction printers at work and they're pretty great. They're exactly like printers, you tell your computer to print a document, that's where it comes out. No hassle.
All this other BS that HP, Epson etc. are pulling isn't innovation, it's extortion. "Just be a printer that isn't shit" is innovation in this environment.
I've worked in several support organization that sincerely prioritized providing good support to customers. They paid good tech's good salaries, hired good managers, and we provided great support. Sales team members would come to me and say they were selling support contracts with ease because of the support provided, "easiest money I ever made" was a common refrain.
But eventually at every company customer / tech support eventually is viewed as a cost, an annoyance. After all when customers complain what do they complain about? Even the best customer's can't praise support enough for companies to avoid eventually seeing it as an annoyance and eventually cost that is easily cut. Good managers see it coming and jump ship, support for support teams starts to erode and the culture changes.
I worked one company where the engineering team would secretly invite some of the support staff over to their building when they had a team lunch ... because they liked us and knew that our team lunches (low cost pizza) had been cancelled.
It happens time and again ... :(
Eventually I moved on and learned to code. Maintenance is hard and not valued.
This idea about sustain-mode resonates with me! It almost feels like we need different kind of "product" people to do this; the typical incentives for product is to innovate innovate innovate.
> What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty.
While I'm not advocating for the growth mindset, you seem to be neglecting why, exactly, most executive incentive packages so frequently include stock options. They are directly intended to defer the rewards over a defined vestment period to align their incentives for the long term success of the company.
You really need to balance both at a company. Some segments need innovation / growth at different times. You also might want to release / invest in competitors to ensure you maintain your market share which is taken via innovation.
Google kind of did this for a time with Inbox and similar products. Apple had multiple phone lines (less like this, but a tad). Facebook has multiple social media platforms. Block has square and cash app (among other things).
However, investors aren’t interest in buying stock in a company with poor returns. They have other options with better returns. It comes with accessing capital in the public markets.
The other issue is that a sustainable business quickly becomes a dying business when competitors innovate and you don’t.
I honestly can’t think of any business that just prints cash without a daily struggle to keep the company growing.
I agree with you completely. The endless growth mindset (resembling cancer) is driven by investors who want passive income in the form of returns. Investment returns in a company necessitate its market cap growing, not merely being sustained. A "sustain" mindset is incompatible with this. It requires ownership to be simple and unanimously content with not having endless return on their capital.
Makes sense, yes the growth mindset makes sense until you or a company get product market fit. When stagnation sets in and things stop working then a growth mindset makes sense again. Of course you also need to make sure that you don’t get blindsided by new changes in society or tech, but those things just need you to be open minded to new things
YouTube on android does something similar. Eventually if you back-button enough you get back when you started. But the amount of presses required increases every few months or so. But hey, engagement and retention goes up!
> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point.
This is OK if management is paid and get bonuses by the money they make by selling products. If they make money and get bonuses by selling their shares or increasing their value, they cross the line between industry and finance. Finance doesn't give a f** about industry. They'll eat one after another like we eat cherries. Unsustainable growth and enshittyfication are two tools to squeeze the most money from a company and if it dies in the process they move to the next one.
I think your phrasing is wrong, 'growth mindset' is the idea that you can improve yourself with effort, education, etc, instead of just 'I'm inherently bad at maths' or whatever.
What you are referring to is simply Capitalism.
Capitalism is where 'capital', aka money, ultimately, owns the 'means of production'. And it also innovates, and creates the means of production, by deploying money to uncertain ventures; building a new factory or whatever.
The problem is that deployed capital needs to earn a return, else why bother. In other words, everything needs to grow. The system just doesn't work without growth.
'Growth' can be, people doing more things, or, more people doing things, or, making more money from the things people do (though I'm not sure that's actual growth). We've come a long way in the last century with the first two, and now the focus seems to be on that third option.
IMHO the current system is past, or at least fast approaching, it's expiry date, and we really should have researched, and have at least a vague idea of a plausible future replacement, by now, otherwise we might be doomed to recycle the 20th C.
> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that.
The worst part is that when companies MUST switch must switch to "sustain" because they can't squeeze out any more growth or their efforts to squeeze out more growth become counter productive, they instead switch to enshitification and drain their user base, and the company, of all the value they can, essentially running into the ground for a few more quarters of profit and bonuses.
As an aside, I'm sad that "growth mindset" has been hijacked to mean "grow at all costs" when it originally meant "the belief that a person's capacities and talents can be improved over time". It was originally a term of nurturing, not of exploitation and infinite capitalism.
I've been noticing this type of bullshit with Netflix recently. Every time I watch something I'm prompted to rate it. Every. Single. Time. And it's not like a gentle suggestion, it's a pop-up that has to he dismissed to be able to interact with the rest of the interface.
I recently bought at a physical store of a large chain an "open box", unused HP LaserJet printer. I asked why it was returned, they said the buyers could not activate it. I was like "okay, lol, I'm a sw engineer, it would take 30 seconds to do that". I bought it and spend like 2-3 hours installing-uninstalling HP's crap software just to make it work. The quality of the prints are great and it works fine now but I'll never buy a HP ever again. I just want to plug it in and print. If I need additional settings, I'll install the related HP software but forcing it is very bad. Also still has not figured it out how to connect it to the WiFi so I use USB...
Some Brother laser printers have three serious downsides:
1 - They count pages printed and will simply stop printing when they've determined you've printed enough even if you still have toner in your cartridge.
2 - They will not work with third party toner cartridges.
3 - They won't let you refill your own toner cartridge.
So you are forced in to buying Brother's toner, and and forced to do so before you may actually want/need to.
Brother (printers and sewing machines) feels like Zoom (audio recorders): a bit conservative but they are very well made and long lasting. And consistent. A USP in today's world of crap-loaded, buggy short living throw away products.
This is not even funny. This article came right when I ended up with a US made Brother mulți-function inkjet printer in Europe, and can apparently only use if buying European Brother cartridges (different than the US ones), swapping the heads, and resetting the chips with a chip reset tool bought and shipped from US, in the hope that the assembly would work.
I had the most amazing printer when I was in college. It was a NeXT laser printer that I got for a steal when NeXT dropped out of the hardware market; the university library had one as a sales model, and I was the NeXT sales rep, so they let me have it for next to half price.
It was amazing because, when you printed something, it would print. 8 pages a minute, guaranteed. When it was out of paper or toner a lovely woman's voice with a British accent would tell you to add paper or change the toner cartridge, and then it would continue to print.
In hindsight, it would have been more than worth it to keep my NeXTstation working just to act as a print server for the printer.
I now have a Brother laser printer. It prints when it feels like printing. Sometimes it doesn't bother to wake from sleep, and there's no way to force it out of sleep, so you have to unplug it and plug it in again and wait for it to boot. Depending on the complexity of the page it can take anywhere from ten seconds to 10+ minutes per page. When it's out of paper or toner, there is no audible signal. You have to walk over and look at the little LCD display.
To be fair, it's loads better than the HP inkjet printer we used to have. We held a family activity where we beat that one to death in the front yard with a sledgehammer.
In India, Brother is not a known brand. They don’t advertise at all. Almost all stores have also shut down. So, by default, everyone almost buys the usual HP, Canon, Epson, etc.
I purchased an Ink-Tank Printer in 2018 and have been using it with no issues. I have refilled the printer only once in the last 5-years. I live in a close-gated but large community. During the pandemic, I help with printing -- a lot, from documents to photos to whatnot. It survived.
My daughters use it for school work, printing stickers, taking photos, etc. Now, my suggestion is -- Brother. Three of my friends have bought them and are all very happy.
I have a Brother printer, which supports plugging in a USB stick with a PDF to print the PDF.
Its PDF parser doesn't seem to support all PDFs, and for some PDFs it will PRINT, on paper, an error message from the PDF parser.
So not only did it not print a perfectly valid PDF, it also wasted paper and ink for it.
You can't know beforehand which PDFs it'll support or not from looking at them, any computer / phone PDF viewer supports those. It could be as simple as a PDF sent by an airline.
They should:
1) use a proper PDF library, not some half baked one
2) if something is wrong with the PDF, show the error on screen, not waste paper for it
My Brother HL2240D (ca. €100) started to see some wear on the wheel that picks up pages after ca 80.000 prints. I combined some parts with another HL2250 that had some wear, and was good to go for a few more years. Rock-solid devices!
I finally picked up a new HL-L2375DW (and passed on the trusty old printer) and have to admit Brother made excellent innovations. As far as there were any annoyances, they are fixed. I no longer turn it off, it remains in standby sipping <<1W of power. And driverless printing is just great.
[+] [-] exabrial|2 years ago|reply
My dad is restoring a 1969 MG Midget. The right turn signal stopped working. Using nothing more than a voltmeter, I found a disconnected wire and a short to the frame.
I replaced the entire length of wire that was failing with $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing.
The lesson here is repairability and simplicity.
We’re constantly lectured to be “environmentally aware” by companies that no longer ensure their products will last a lifetime. There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. My Brother printer is nearing 12 years and is still on the same damn print cartridge. My Neato robotics vacuum has had countless parts replaced and is about the same age.
If you truly want to be a good steward of the earth, stop demanding/consuming latest and greatest, endless product and UI refreshes, and instead demand 30+ years out of a product (with small repairs).
[+] [-] cookiengineer|2 years ago|reply
In the end it somewhat boils down to pure greed. Instead of stabilizing production costs and/or reusing generic components to ease up manufacturing and repair - HP, Epson, Canon, Dell, Samsung, Kyocera and others try to hype their products with whatever tech stack is currently in trend. "growth hacking" is literally their job description.
There eventually will be a ChatGPT printer on the market. It's inevitable due to what kind of people manage a printer business: It's not the type of people that know how to build printers anymore.
[+] [-] donatj|2 years ago|reply
My dad’s big fancy Cannon photo printer has caused him nothing but grief. He swears up and down he needs to be able to print large-format full color photographs, but I have never seen him do so. What I have seen is his black cartridge dry out between uses and fail when he needs to print a form.
My wife is occasionally frustrated by our inability to print color, but I am more than happy to drive to Walgreens or my companies office to print a color item once every couple months. An inkjets ink would’ve dried between prints.
[+] [-] ilamont|2 years ago|reply
Once a new cartridge failed ("not recognized" error even though it was purchased through Staples) and the brother support person walked me through some secret squirrel reset code which I of course saved for future use. The fact I could get someone from the company on the line to help me was a rare experience for tech companies.
My only gripe with the toner cartridges is the requirement to enter a serial number to get a recycling mailing label. The serial numbers are miniscule.
[+] [-] gilbetron|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rzimmerman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esond|2 years ago|reply
No colour printing, but who cares. We do the same thing as you. When we want some photos printed (usually for distribution to family), it's no major hassle to get them printed at the local office supply.
[+] [-] Mister_Snuggles|2 years ago|reply
Many years ago, I spotted an HP Color LaserJet Pro m254dw online at Costco and bought it. It's been a fantastic printer. The toner never dries out, "empty cartridges" don't prevent it from printing. It is modern enough that I can use AirPrint to print to it, but old-school enough that it has an ethernet port. The supplies status page basically says "Just because it's at 0% doesn't mean you can't print, but maybe buy a new toner cartridge and replace it when the output gets bad." It didn't require any special drivers, there's no need to link an HP account, and it has a usable web-based management interface.
So far I have the following complaints about the printer:
* After some large amount of uptime (3mo? 6mo? I'm not sure) it won't respond to print requests. Rebooting it fixes the issue.
* Toner cartridges are expensive. I priced out something like $450CAD for a set of the three colour cartridges. I'm still on the starter cartridges and, even though they're "empty", the output quality is fine.
* The word "Color" in the product name is not properly localized to the Canadian market.
Obviously I'm grasping at straws as far as complaints go!
Honestly, this thing feels like I found a unicorn. I've been looking for a similar printer for my parents, but I haven't found anything from HP that ticks all of the boxes. The next one for them will likely be a Brother.
[+] [-] niemandhier|2 years ago|reply
Cartridges last for thousand of pages; no strange cloud requirements; the FritzBox registers the printer immediately and all devices in the local net can print.
Non of this was the case for my previous HP or Epson printers…
[+] [-] JohnMakin|2 years ago|reply
Do you know how else you can do that? by opening the door. We need to stop "innovating" features that absolutely no one needs, because clearly the result isn't a better product, just a messier, more complex one that is frequently over-engineered and under-supported.
[+] [-] billpg|2 years ago|reply
I saw a fridge that had an app so you could control it from anywhere.
My requirements for a fridge are remarkably simple, to the point the only practical use I could think of an app was alarm that I'd left the door open or something.
(If this particular app did have a door-open alarm, it wasn't on the list of features. It did say you could adjust the temperature from your office. A location I'm often worrying about the fridge.)
[+] [-] ansc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aljgz|2 years ago|reply
What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty. This is happening to almost every tech company, and the exceptions are rare gems.
In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons.
I made a mistake of buying another Samsung product after years. Never again. I made a mistake of buying another HP product, never again. I might still consider Dell only because of how well they supported me with their monitor flicker.
None of these products have a defect that's caused by poor design, programming, or manufacturing. They all suffer from growth-obsessed mindset.
Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed.
[+] [-] Simon_ORourke|2 years ago|reply
This! Each and every time I see an Instagram link I avoid clicking on it for the same click/login capture nonsense. If they opened it up for views only with out logging in, I'd probably actually end up using the service. Short-term protectionist strategies like these will be etched into the gravestone of Meta/Facebook.
[+] [-] nine_k|2 years ago|reply
But if this strategy underperforms as badly as we as customers feel it does, it will eventually drive its perpetrators from the market. If they think that their positions are unassailable, let them remember how the unassailable GMC and Ford felt in 2000s.
[+] [-] withinboredom|2 years ago|reply
Once you hit that ceiling, the only reasonable thing is to focus on churn, not growth (as it will have the most impact). But that is like explaining that a "circular line on a map is actually a straight line" they say they get it, but they still see a circular line.
[+] [-] clusmore|2 years ago|reply
Kent Beck calls this the Explore and Extract phases (with the middle phase being Expand). I'm not sure if you had this talk in mind as you were writing your comment, but if not I think it'll resonate with you.
[1]: https://youtu.be/YGhS8VQpS6s
[+] [-] ants_everywhere|2 years ago|reply
Somewhat pedantic comment: the phrase "growth mindset" is also psychology jargon that refers to the fact that many skills are more learnable than most people realize. It contrasts with a "fixed mindset" where people assume you have to work with what you've got.
Just wanted to point that out so people don't get confused between the healthy idea of being able to grow and the idea you're addressing, which is more like a compulsion for businesses to grow economically.
[+] [-] konschubert|2 years ago|reply
The shareholders can then invest into new companies and startups.
This is much better for the economy AND for the shareholders
[+] [-] grumpy-de-sre|2 years ago|reply
The American growth at all costs mindset (particularly quarterly) is excellent during the technology exploration phase. It spurs radical innovation, but as a technology matures it becomes impossible to meet growth expectations. In response to this the spiral of Enshittification kicks off and eventually the company and it's products fade into irrelevance. Stability in such an environment is impossible (the gain knob is cranked to the max).
The German Mittelstand are different, typically they are much slower to innovate during the technology exploration phase (I think mostly due to the German economy not really rewarding early stage innovation). However as a technology matures the Mittelstand's strength in stable, gradual evolution and refinement really shines. They focus on being the best in their niche and grow by expanding to new markets, opening adjacent product lines etc. Enshittification is the last thing on their minds (the system is critically/over damped).
[+] [-] jbreckmckye|2 years ago|reply
Imagine a human being with a growth mindset. He optimises his bodyfat to the point of anorexia. He optimises conversations by extracting knowledge then moving on. His diet is pure protein shakes and broccoli. Every morning he does six Leetcode Hards. If you met him you'd think he was deranged.
This growth ideology means every company we interact with behaves like Bob. Soon enough this Bobism filters into people through the labour market and professional values. (Like the Leetcoders). It's alienating and the only purpose it serves is an investment based economy with unclear benefits to society at large
It creates a very strange world where we have computers acting like people and people acting like machines
[+] [-] gofreddygo|2 years ago|reply
Yes! What I see instead is a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mindset. Its everywhere I see. I wish there was a way to see and fix this before its too late.
The right way to treat your loyal customers is also micro-intangible, hard to show clear numbers and so does not bear any rewards for a manager taking this approach. Instead, the opposite of screwing loyal customers for new ones is rampant, easy to cook up numbers and so amply rewarded not just limited to tech companies.
Unless the same management chain is responsible for new customers and leaving ones, this is an internal conflict of interest and its effects only show at the macro level.
I've seen many once-popular restaurants go this route, losing long time repeat customers who prefer well priced, familiar drinks and dishes over hit or miss exotic overpriced ones. They don't complain, they just stop coming back.
Car manufacturers, Appliance manufacturers, Food chains, Internet Service Providers, Telcos, tech startups are all guilty of this. Factions at MS, Goog, AAPL too are guilty.
Exceptions here are really really rare. I've never bought a brother printer, but it will be my next.
[+] [-] taneq|2 years ago|reply
Exactly. We have two new Brother multifunction printers at work and they're pretty great. They're exactly like printers, you tell your computer to print a document, that's where it comes out. No hassle.
All this other BS that HP, Epson etc. are pulling isn't innovation, it's extortion. "Just be a printer that isn't shit" is innovation in this environment.
[+] [-] duxup|2 years ago|reply
I've worked in several support organization that sincerely prioritized providing good support to customers. They paid good tech's good salaries, hired good managers, and we provided great support. Sales team members would come to me and say they were selling support contracts with ease because of the support provided, "easiest money I ever made" was a common refrain.
But eventually at every company customer / tech support eventually is viewed as a cost, an annoyance. After all when customers complain what do they complain about? Even the best customer's can't praise support enough for companies to avoid eventually seeing it as an annoyance and eventually cost that is easily cut. Good managers see it coming and jump ship, support for support teams starts to erode and the culture changes.
I worked one company where the engineering team would secretly invite some of the support staff over to their building when they had a team lunch ... because they liked us and knew that our team lunches (low cost pizza) had been cancelled.
It happens time and again ... :(
Eventually I moved on and learned to code. Maintenance is hard and not valued.
[+] [-] jauntywundrkind|2 years ago|reply
This topic reminds me a lot of the recent thread on Signal being so comparatively small but being scaled so big (and shaming big tech companies for being so big). https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/signal-meta-google-too-b... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38382811
[+] [-] jakderrida|2 years ago|reply
While I'm not advocating for the growth mindset, you seem to be neglecting why, exactly, most executive incentive packages so frequently include stock options. They are directly intended to defer the rewards over a defined vestment period to align their incentives for the long term success of the company.
[+] [-] lettergram|2 years ago|reply
Google kind of did this for a time with Inbox and similar products. Apple had multiple phone lines (less like this, but a tad). Facebook has multiple social media platforms. Block has square and cash app (among other things).
[+] [-] refurb|2 years ago|reply
However, investors aren’t interest in buying stock in a company with poor returns. They have other options with better returns. It comes with accessing capital in the public markets.
The other issue is that a sustainable business quickly becomes a dying business when competitors innovate and you don’t.
I honestly can’t think of any business that just prints cash without a daily struggle to keep the company growing.
[+] [-] artursapek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zubairq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wooptoo|2 years ago|reply
Honest question: what's wrong with Samsung? I'm pretty happy with their phones and SSDs but haven't had any experience with their appliances.
[+] [-] gpderetta|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|2 years ago|reply
This is OK if management is paid and get bonuses by the money they make by selling products. If they make money and get bonuses by selling their shares or increasing their value, they cross the line between industry and finance. Finance doesn't give a f** about industry. They'll eat one after another like we eat cherries. Unsustainable growth and enshittyfication are two tools to squeeze the most money from a company and if it dies in the process they move to the next one.
[+] [-] jacknews|2 years ago|reply
What you are referring to is simply Capitalism.
Capitalism is where 'capital', aka money, ultimately, owns the 'means of production'. And it also innovates, and creates the means of production, by deploying money to uncertain ventures; building a new factory or whatever.
The problem is that deployed capital needs to earn a return, else why bother. In other words, everything needs to grow. The system just doesn't work without growth.
'Growth' can be, people doing more things, or, more people doing things, or, making more money from the things people do (though I'm not sure that's actual growth). We've come a long way in the last century with the first two, and now the focus seems to be on that third option.
IMHO the current system is past, or at least fast approaching, it's expiry date, and we really should have researched, and have at least a vague idea of a plausible future replacement, by now, otherwise we might be doomed to recycle the 20th C.
[+] [-] tcfhgj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ensorceled|2 years ago|reply
The worst part is that when companies MUST switch must switch to "sustain" because they can't squeeze out any more growth or their efforts to squeeze out more growth become counter productive, they instead switch to enshitification and drain their user base, and the company, of all the value they can, essentially running into the ground for a few more quarters of profit and bonuses.
As an aside, I'm sad that "growth mindset" has been hijacked to mean "grow at all costs" when it originally meant "the belief that a person's capacities and talents can be improved over time". It was originally a term of nurturing, not of exploitation and infinite capitalism.
[+] [-] mtlmtlmtlmtl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ekianjo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmikaeld|2 years ago|reply
I've had a lot of clients with office and I do remote support, always recommended OKI because they just work.
This is all that's needed from a printer:
- 1 day delivery to the door (yes, from OKI).
- Register and get 1 free large black cartridge.
- Print mono-tone or single color, don't need all of them.
- Windows and MacOS installs drivers OOB, no need to download or install anything.
- It connects to WIFI, everyone can connect and print.
- Only 1 e-mail from OKI in a year! (From registration)
[+] [-] hereforcomments|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|2 years ago|reply
1 - They count pages printed and will simply stop printing when they've determined you've printed enough even if you still have toner in your cartridge.
2 - They will not work with third party toner cartridges.
3 - They won't let you refill your own toner cartridge.
So you are forced in to buying Brother's toner, and and forced to do so before you may actually want/need to.
[+] [-] rmoriz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netfortius|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makach|2 years ago|reply
Last 4 years, I've owned a brother b/w laser printer. I replaced the original cartridge with a long life cartridge after the original was depleted.
It just works, it prints from my work pc, mobile phones, iPad, private computer, and even guests needing to print can connect and print.
Previous frustration of low quality, special paper, engine failures etc. is nothing but a faint memory.
[+] [-] GlenTheMachine|2 years ago|reply
It was amazing because, when you printed something, it would print. 8 pages a minute, guaranteed. When it was out of paper or toner a lovely woman's voice with a British accent would tell you to add paper or change the toner cartridge, and then it would continue to print.
In hindsight, it would have been more than worth it to keep my NeXTstation working just to act as a print server for the printer.
I now have a Brother laser printer. It prints when it feels like printing. Sometimes it doesn't bother to wake from sleep, and there's no way to force it out of sleep, so you have to unplug it and plug it in again and wait for it to boot. Depending on the complexity of the page it can take anywhere from ten seconds to 10+ minutes per page. When it's out of paper or toner, there is no audible signal. You have to walk over and look at the little LCD display.
To be fair, it's loads better than the HP inkjet printer we used to have. We held a family activity where we beat that one to death in the front yard with a sledgehammer.
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|2 years ago|reply
I purchased an Ink-Tank Printer in 2018 and have been using it with no issues. I have refilled the printer only once in the last 5-years. I live in a close-gated but large community. During the pandemic, I help with printing -- a lot, from documents to photos to whatnot. It survived.
My daughters use it for school work, printing stickers, taking photos, etc. Now, my suggestion is -- Brother. Three of my friends have bought them and are all very happy.
Brother works.
[+] [-] Aardwolf|2 years ago|reply
Its PDF parser doesn't seem to support all PDFs, and for some PDFs it will PRINT, on paper, an error message from the PDF parser.
So not only did it not print a perfectly valid PDF, it also wasted paper and ink for it.
You can't know beforehand which PDFs it'll support or not from looking at them, any computer / phone PDF viewer supports those. It could be as simple as a PDF sent by an airline.
They should:
1) use a proper PDF library, not some half baked one
2) if something is wrong with the PDF, show the error on screen, not waste paper for it
[+] [-] pitdicker|2 years ago|reply
I finally picked up a new HL-L2375DW (and passed on the trusty old printer) and have to admit Brother made excellent innovations. As far as there were any annoyances, they are fixed. I no longer turn it off, it remains in standby sipping <<1W of power. And driverless printing is just great.