Bonus for engineers, is that done?

[bitrex]

On 1/22/20 10:38 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 03:17:37 -0800 (PST), blocher@columbus.rr.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 6:48:23 PM UTC-5, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Let’s say you’re a standard paid engineer

Let’s say you put in an extraordinarily effort and saves your company +20 million dollars per year

A sales guy would be getting an enormous bonus, but are there any examples of engineers getting a percentage of the savings?

I know consulting firm do it like no cure no pay, but does it happen for employed engineers?

Regards

Klaus

I do not think I have ever received a bonus ( maybe gift cards or something nominal) that was outside the scope of bonuses that everyone else in the company received. Corporations are faced with the dilemma that 80% of the work is done by good, but not exceptional people. The other 20% is done by people who all think they individually are doing most of that extra 20%. Giving out individual bonuses (outside of management where everyone expects that and nobody actually knows who is getting the bonuses or how much) tends to just destroy morale. Companies cannot survive by singling out "rock stars" and rewarding them financially. It makes for one very happy person and hundreds of resentful people.

Look up Price's Law. I understand it's been verified in organizations
of various sizes.

I know of one large and successful semiconductor company where the
large majority of employees are useless or less. Managers are worse.

I agree that we should not make superstars of anyone, especially
engineers. If specially rewarded, it should be done quietly.

The most effective reward is probably salary. If you give them a
megabuck bonus, they will likely quit and become a surfer or
something.

Did anyone try asking? Might be surprised what one can get if you ask
politely and the reasoning comes off as reasonable and not just "I'm the
best and deserve more money."

Corporate engineers probably hold more leverage in their company then
they realize but like Mom always said "Almost never hurts to ask, the
worst they can do is say no."

If the engineer in question is confident enough to feel he or she
deserves one and their performance is legitimately congruent it's
unlikely they're going to get the hurt put on them other than hearing
"No" simply for asking. But you gotta be confident that it's that way.

 

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 11:36:36 PM UTC-10, Klaus Kragelund wrote:

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:04:24 AM UTC+1, Winfield Hill wrote:
John Larkin wrote...

We don't bonus engineers, or anyone else, for specific
project savings. They are supposed to do that.

What does that mean? An exceptional accomplishment,
evaluated in terms of project savings, instead of in
terms of expanded sales?

Sales people often have a contract that pays 10% incentive of the sales profit, so potential huge pay outs

Engineers are suckers, get's nothing for boosted sales

Cheers

Klaus

Sales pays for all your fun engineering.
Sale forces are very important, so they get The Cash Commi$$ion.

I do not to be polite to rude customers, so the
sales team does the unpleasant work, engineers
do the clean work. Enjoy your cocoon.

 

[Piotr Wyderski]

Klaus Kragelund wrote:

> At our firm we get a bonus related to general performance and company EBIT etc. But it is quite low and not something we are in full control of

Same here and perhaps everywhere else on the planet. But hey, as an
engineer you are supposed to be intelligent, so why not draw the
inescapable conclusions? Discover the criteria, learn them by heart and
adapt yourself. Survival of the fittest in the purest form. If your
bonus is mostly attached to the average, become a role model of the
average. Only a company privately held by you deserves exceptional
performance.

In a company I had worked before the management decided that it is worth
paying an employee for a patented idea. So they set the rate to 1 EUR
per patent. Guess how many patent applications were issued afterwards.

Best regards, Piotr

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 23/1/20 1:55 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 01:32:53 -0800 (PST), Klaus Kragelund
klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 1:36:45 AM UTC+1, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 16:11:28 -0800 (PST), omnilobe@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 1:48:23 PM UTC-10, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Let’s say you’re a standard paid engineer

Let’s say you put in an extraordinarily effort and saves your company +20 million dollars per year

A sales guy would be getting an enormous bonus, but are there any examples of engineers getting a percentage of the savings?

I know consulting firm do it like no cure no pay, but does it happen for employed engineers?

Regards

Klaus

Not cash. That is for sales people. Engineers get stock options
with a 5 year vesting period.

We have two cash bonuses per year: one Christmas bonus, same amount to
all employees, and one fiscal year-end bonus, with scaling according
to salary and estimated performance/value.

Company 401K contributions are some per cent of salary, but that's all
controlled by law.

We don't bonus engineers, or anyone else, for specific project
savings. They are supposed to do that.

But that does not get your employees to go the extra mile

Cheers

Klaus

Except that we do.

Logic 101.

Saying "X does not cause Y" does not imply that Y can not happen while X
is the case.

It does say that to motivate Y, X might not be helpful.

CH

 

[Piotr Wyderski]

Rick C wrote:

> I don't think that was about motivation.

Of course not, but after that there was no motivation. People would
gladly give their ideas for free, as they were inventing things for fun
in their paid time ad it was kind of natural that the results belong to
the company. But 1 EUR was a grave insult.

Likely that is what the 1 EUR was about, they just didn't want to
explain it that way.

Shortly after there luckily was nothing calling for an explanation.
The Monty Pythons were deadly serious compared to what that management
was capable of.

Another example from a different company: there was a project which
turned out to be such a massive (massive!) failure and so many senior
staff folks were involved that it was absolutely impossible to kill it.
Because then the even more senior folks would have to start asking
questions and nobody, including them, was interested in finding the
answers. So the only option left was to trumpet success, give
significant awards and safely "discontinue" the project.

Best regards, Piotr

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 21:53:06 +0100, Piotr Wyderski
<peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

Klaus Kragelund wrote:

At our firm we get a bonus related to general performance and company EBIT etc. But it is quite low and not something we are in full control of

Same here and perhaps everywhere else on the planet. But hey, as an
engineer you are supposed to be intelligent, so why not draw the
inescapable conclusions? Discover the criteria, learn them by heart and
adapt yourself. Survival of the fittest in the purest form. If your
bonus is mostly attached to the average, become a role model of the
average. Only a company privately held by you deserves exceptional
performance.

In a company I had worked before the management decided that it is worth
paying an employee for a patented idea. So they set the rate to 1 EUR
per patent. Guess how many patent applications were issued afterwards.

Best regards, Piotr

What's worse, the 1 euro (or one dollar) is seldom actually paid.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Rick C]

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:53:10 PM UTC-5, Piotr Wyderski wrote:

Klaus Kragelund wrote:

At our firm we get a bonus related to general performance and company EBIT etc. But it is quite low and not something we are in full control of

Same here and perhaps everywhere else on the planet. But hey, as an
engineer you are supposed to be intelligent, so why not draw the
inescapable conclusions? Discover the criteria, learn them by heart and
adapt yourself. Survival of the fittest in the purest form. If your
bonus is mostly attached to the average, become a role model of the
average. Only a company privately held by you deserves exceptional
performance.

In a company I had worked before the management decided that it is worth
paying an employee for a patented idea. So they set the rate to 1 EUR
per patent. Guess how many patent applications were issued afterwards.

Best regards, Piotr

I don't think that was about motivation. Contracts (at least in the US) require both parties involved receive "consideration" meaning something tangible of worth. A contract can't only be about one person promising something to someone else. To make sure no one can claim there was no "consideration" and so making the contract invalid, the party getting all the significant "consideration" promises to give the other party valuable consideration of $1.

Likely that is what the 1 EUR was about, they just didn't want to explain it that way.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 22/1/20 11:37 am, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

onsdag den 22. januar 2020 kl. 00.48.23 UTC+1 skrev Klaus Kragelund:
Let’s say you’re a standard paid engineer

Let’s say you put in an extraordinarily effort and saves your company +20 million dollars per year

A sales guy would be getting an enormous bonus, but are there any examples of engineers getting a percentage of the savings?

I know consulting firm do it like no cure no pay, but does it happen for employed engineers?


I don't know if it is quite the same I've been in a big company where there was an annual bonus depending on he companys result and distributed depending on the annual evaluation you effort that year and a scale of how important you were
for the company

Sorta related I believe, a some (former) MĂŚrsk employees have won large sums
for inventing things that made MĂŚrsk large amounts of money

it is in the law that an employer gets inventions you make related to your job but if it is very valuable you must be compensated

If the value of your work did not exceed your cost to the company, why
would they employ you?

[Nevertheless I approve of the special conditions attaching to
high-value inventions]

CH

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 08:43:00 +1100, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 23/1/20 1:55 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 01:32:53 -0800 (PST), Klaus Kragelund
klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 1:36:45 AM UTC+1, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 16:11:28 -0800 (PST), omnilobe@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 1:48:23 PM UTC-10, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Let’s say you’re a standard paid engineer

Let’s say you put in an extraordinarily effort and saves your company +20 million dollars per year

A sales guy would be getting an enormous bonus, but are there any examples of engineers getting a percentage of the savings?

I know consulting firm do it like no cure no pay, but does it happen for employed engineers?

Regards

Klaus

Not cash. That is for sales people. Engineers get stock options
with a 5 year vesting period.

We have two cash bonuses per year: one Christmas bonus, same amount to
all employees, and one fiscal year-end bonus, with scaling according
to salary and estimated performance/value.

Company 401K contributions are some per cent of salary, but that's all
controlled by law.

We don't bonus engineers, or anyone else, for specific project
savings. They are supposed to do that.

But that does not get your employees to go the extra mile

Cheers

Klaus

Except that we do.

Logic 101.

Saying "X does not cause Y" does not imply that Y can not happen while X
is the case.

It does say that to motivate Y, X might not be helpful.

CH

Some engineers enjoy designing cool stuff, for its own stake. That's a
different motivation than money.

Of course, salaries need to be competitive, or they will design that
cool stuff for somebody else.

We've had wives send in long complex justifications for raises, when
their engineer spouses were apparently content.

My first engineering job paid $400 a month. That seemed OK to me. I
wouldn't do something boring for any amount of money.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Piotr Wyderski]

Steve Wilson wrote:

> I then started my own company, and kept the millions for myself.

Exactly. If you have to patent, patent garbage and keep the real
breakthroughs well hidden in your head.

In fact, paying an engineer for patenting an idea is not an award, but a
form of compensation: by doing so the engineer will be prevented from
using his own idea in his next job. So you pay him for *not reusing* the
idea, not for his creativity.

Best regards, Piotr

 

[Steve Wilson]

Piotr Wyderski <peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

Klaus Kragelund wrote:

At our firm we get a bonus related to general performance and company
EBIT etc. But it is quite low and not something we are in full control
of

Same here and perhaps everywhere else on the planet. But hey, as an
engineer you are supposed to be intelligent, so why not draw the
inescapable conclusions? Discover the criteria, learn them by heart and
adapt yourself. Survival of the fittest in the purest form. If your
bonus is mostly attached to the average, become a role model of the
average. Only a company privately held by you deserves exceptional
performance.

In a company I had worked before the management decided that it is worth
paying an employee for a patented idea. So they set the rate to 1 EUR
per patent. Guess how many patent applications were issued afterwards.

Best regards, Piotr

While I was MIT, I got a fairly useful patent. MIT payed me $1.00 for it.

At Memorex I got a patent that saved them hundreds of millions of dollars.
Memorex payed me $1.00 for it.

I then started my own company, and kept the millions for myself.

 

[Piotr Wyderski]

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I guess we could have negative bonuses, some punishment, if some
product doesn't sell, or if we have to fix something expensive.

Fixing is obvious, by why should an engineer be punished for low sales?
They design stuff that meets, I presume, the specification, so their job
is done here.

Best regards, Piotr

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:57:34 +0100, Piotr Wyderski
<peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I guess we could have negative bonuses, some punishment, if some
product doesn't sell, or if we have to fix something expensive.

Fixing is obvious, by why should an engineer be punished for low sales?
They design stuff that meets, I presume, the specification, so their job
is done here.

Best regards, Piotr

Our few engineers usually invent the specifications for the things
they design. And imagine features beyond what we or a customer first
envisioned.

We don't have "marketing" as such, but if we did, how would marketing
droids know what is possible or what might be useful?

"Meeting the specification" sounds dull. One common problem is the
opposite, surrendering to featuritis and including too many ideas.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 23/1/20 9:18 am, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 08:43:00 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 23/1/20 1:55 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 01:32:53 -0800 (PST), Klaus Kragelund
klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 1:36:45 AM UTC+1, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 16:11:28 -0800 (PST), omnilobe@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 1:48:23 PM UTC-10, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Let’s say you’re a standard paid engineer

Let’s say you put in an extraordinarily effort and saves your company +20 million dollars per year

A sales guy would be getting an enormous bonus, but are there any examples of engineers getting a percentage of the savings?

I know consulting firm do it like no cure no pay, but does it happen for employed engineers?

Regards

Klaus

Not cash. That is for sales people. Engineers get stock options
with a 5 year vesting period.

We have two cash bonuses per year: one Christmas bonus, same amount to
all employees, and one fiscal year-end bonus, with scaling according
to salary and estimated performance/value.

Company 401K contributions are some per cent of salary, but that's all
controlled by law.

We don't bonus engineers, or anyone else, for specific project
savings. They are supposed to do that.

But that does not get your employees to go the extra mile

Cheers

Klaus

Except that we do.

Logic 101.

Saying "X does not cause Y" does not imply that Y can not happen while X
is the case.

It does say that to motivate Y, X might not be helpful.

CH

Some engineers enjoy designing cool stuff, for its own stake.

Only the good ones That's why they became good at it!


> That's a different motivation than money.

To such an engineer, money is not a motivation, so much as inadequate
pay is a demotivation. Money matters, but only if there's not enough.

CH

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 10:57:42 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:57:34 +0100, Piotr Wyderski
peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I guess we could have negative bonuses, some punishment, if some
product doesn't sell, or if we have to fix something expensive.

Fixing is obvious, by why should an engineer be punished for low sales?
They design stuff that meets, I presume, the specification, so their job
is done here.

Best regards, Piotr


Our few engineers usually invent the specifications for the things
they design. And imagine features beyond what we or a customer first
envisioned.

We don't have "marketing" as such, but if we did, how would marketing
droids know what is possible or what might be useful?

Tom Peters 1982 book, "In Search of Excellence"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Excellence

makes this point with some enthusiasm. Sadly, one of his "excellent" companies was IBM.

The places where I worked, the marketing droids didn't want the engineers in contact with potential customers, because they didn't want the customers to hold off buying an existing product in favour of waiting for the new product coming down the pipe-line. There was also the problem that at least some of the engineers knew a lot more about the product than the marketeers, and made them look under-informed from time to time.

From the point of view of getting the engineers to understand what the customers really wanted, letting them talk to customers is an excellent idea, but it's a two-way street.

"Meeting the specification" sounds dull. One common problem is the
opposite, surrendering to featuritis and including too many ideas.

Too many bells and whistles, and the wrong bells and whistles, is a route to making a product that is hard to use and costs too much.

Hearing from the customers about what is important to them tends to kill off the more bizarre bells and whistles.

The first electron beam tester I worked on had a beam blanking system that could deliver a 0.5nsec wide pulse of electrons at any beam voltage from 300V to 15kV.

I had to invent a special set of beam-blanking electrodes that could be long enough to move a 15kV beam of electrons right off the target aperture, and short enough that a 300V electron could get through them in in less than 0.5nsec.

The 15kV electron beam was only required for EBIC (electron beam induced current) testing, where the electrons got into the conducting channel and produced charge carriers. Nobody used it.

The next machine didn't go above 2kV, and normally ran at about 700V. It didn't incorporate my patented scheme.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 12:07:09 PM UTC+11, Clifford Heath wrote:

On 23/1/20 9:18 am, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 08:43:00 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 23/1/20 1:55 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 01:32:53 -0800 (PST), Klaus Kragelund
klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 1:36:45 AM UTC+1, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 16:11:28 -0800 (PST), omnilobe@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 1:48:23 PM UTC-10, Klaus Kragelund wrote:
Let’s say you’re a standard paid engineer

Let’s say you put in an extraordinarily effort and saves your company +20 million dollars per year

A sales guy would be getting an enormous bonus, but are there any examples of engineers getting a percentage of the savings?

I know consulting firm do it like no cure no pay, but does it happen for employed engineers?

Regards

Klaus

Not cash. That is for sales people. Engineers get stock options
with a 5 year vesting period.

We have two cash bonuses per year: one Christmas bonus, same amount to
all employees, and one fiscal year-end bonus, with scaling according
to salary and estimated performance/value.

Company 401K contributions are some per cent of salary, but that's all
controlled by law.

We don't bonus engineers, or anyone else, for specific project
savings. They are supposed to do that.

But that does not get your employees to go the extra mile

Cheers

Klaus

Except that we do.

Logic 101.

Saying "X does not cause Y" does not imply that Y can not happen while X
is the case.

It does say that to motivate Y, X might not be helpful.

Some engineers enjoy designing cool stuff, for its own stake.

Only the good ones That's why they became good at it!

That doesn't follow. Motivation is only one of the factors that influences competence. Intelligence and conscientiousness are other factors, and money doesn't influence either. Being depressed about your place in the pecking order can come into it, and endogenous depression never helps.

> > That's a different motivation than money.

An additional motivation. You can have several different motivations for doing a particular task.

To such an engineer, money is not a motivation, so much as inadequate
pay is a demotivation. Money matters, but only if there's not enough.

There's quite a bit more going on than that. A high salary is a feature that gives you a higher status in your work environment, which means that other people are more likely to be helpful, and makes it a nicer place for you to work. Inadequate pay is humiliating, even if it is quite high enough to pay the bills and support your lifestyle.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Piotr Wyderski]

John Larkin wrote:

We don't have "marketing" as such, but if we did, how would marketing
droids know what is possible or what might be useful?

Knowing what is useful or needed and being punished for the inability of
the employing company to sell its own products are two completely
different issues. Being punished for designing crap that the company did
manage to sell is legitimate.

> "Meeting the specification" sounds dull.

As a customer I don't care if you enjoy your job or hate it. All I am
interested in is if your product work as advertised, that is if they
meet their specification.

One common problem is the
opposite, surrendering to featuritis and including too many ideas.

Sure, BTDT recently. I needed a SIMPLE yet up to date forward controller
chip thay would have predictable overcurrent handling behaviour. Simple
peak current limiting would perfectly do the job. Unfortunately, the
tons of the newer "smart" controllers that I had evaluated turned out to
be so smart that in the case of a mild overload they attempted to earn a
PhD and publish. It took several days to find the LM25037, which has the
magic knob "don't try to outsmart the designer". For a moment of a
nervous breakdown I even had warm feelings towards the LM3845 --
designing with it is nauseous, but
it is at least completely predictable. A known foe syndrome of a sort...

Best regards, Piotr

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 23/01/20 02:01, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 10:57:42 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:57:34 +0100, Piotr Wyderski
peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I guess we could have negative bonuses, some punishment, if some
product doesn't sell, or if we have to fix something expensive.

Fixing is obvious, by why should an engineer be punished for low sales?
They design stuff that meets, I presume, the specification, so their job
is done here.

Best regards, Piotr


Our few engineers usually invent the specifications for the things they
design. And imagine features beyond what we or a customer first
envisioned.

We don't have "marketing" as such, but if we did, how would marketing
droids know what is possible or what might be useful?

Tom Peters 1982 book, "In Search of Excellence"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Excellence

makes this point with some enthusiasm. Sadly, one of his "excellent"
companies was IBM.

Ah yes, the book that took 400 pages to state successful
companies boiled things down to two-page memos

I read it while at CCL and before joining HP; it confirmed
my opinion of HP.

The places where I worked, the marketing droids didn't want the engineers in
contact with potential customers, because they didn't want the customers to
hold off buying an existing product in favour of waiting for the new product
coming down the pipe-line. There was also the problem that at least some of
the engineers knew a lot more about the product than the marketeers, and made
them look under-informed from time to time.

From the point of view of getting the engineers to understand what the
customers really wanted, letting them talk to customers is an excellent idea,
but it's a two-way street.

Yes. That was a principal attraction of CCL to me. The
engineers elicited what the customers wanted, wrote the
proposal including legal clauses, then did the work and
delivered it.

Inside HP there was a strong culture of getting people
to talk horizontally across any divisions that happened
to be part of a solution/problem. Management was limited
to ensuring the relevant conversations took place.

It paid dividends.

I'm not sure how much HP divisions' engineers talked
to their customers.

"Meeting the specification" sounds dull. One common problem is the
opposite, surrendering to featuritis and including too many ideas.

Too many bells and whistles, and the wrong bells and whistles, is a route to
making a product that is hard to use and costs too much.

Hearing from the customers about what is important to them tends to kill off
the more bizarre bells and whistles.

It can do the opposite; some customers want Heath Robinson
solutions to simple problems, often non-technical problems!

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 7:58:02 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 23/01/20 02:01, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 10:57:42 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:57:34 +0100, Piotr Wyderski
peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

<snip>

"Meeting the specification" sounds dull. One common problem is the
opposite, surrendering to featuritis and including too many ideas.

Too many bells and whistles, and the wrong bells and whistles, is a route to
making a product that is hard to use and costs too much.

Hearing from the customers about what is important to them tends to kill off
the more bizarre bells and whistles.

It can do the opposite; some customers want Heath Robinson
solutions to simple problems, often non-technical problems!

I should have said "hearing from a number of customers about what is important tends to kill off the more bizarre bells and whistles".

Individual customers frequently want to keep on doing what worked for them on their crude experimental lash-ups.

Sometimes it's cheaper to give them what they want, rather than going to the trouble of demonstrating that they don't need it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 23/01/20 14:25, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 7:58:02 PM UTC+11, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 23/01/20 02:01, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 10:57:42 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:57:34 +0100, Piotr Wyderski
peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

snip

"Meeting the specification" sounds dull. One common problem is the
opposite, surrendering to featuritis and including too many ideas.

Too many bells and whistles, and the wrong bells and whistles, is a route
to making a product that is hard to use and costs too much.

Hearing from the customers about what is important to them tends to kill
off the more bizarre bells and whistles.

It can do the opposite; some customers want Heath Robinson solutions to
simple problems, often non-technical problems!

I should have said "hearing from a number of customers about what is
important tends to kill off the more bizarre bells and whistles".

I've seen some customers add baroquely complex bells
and whistles, because that's what their marketing
thought they could sell to their end users.

When in the position of being their end user, I wanted
simplicity. But the salesmen like having strange alternatives
to give the man in the street the illusion that they
are making a useful choice.

Individual customers frequently want to keep on doing what worked for them on
their crude experimental lash-ups.

To be contrary...

I've even seen marketing say
"do what you did before (sotto voce: whatever that
was because we don't know) but add X",
when the customers were saying
"don't do what you did before, we only put up with it
because there was no alternative back then".

Sometimes it's cheaper to give them what they want, rather than going to the
trouble of demonstrating that they don't need it.

Yes.

Summary: if an idiocy is possible, it will happen.