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Why Companies Don't Fix Bugs

(idiallo.com)
177 points foxfired | 4 comments | 07 Apr 25 20:03 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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cletus ◴[08 Apr 25 05:42 UTC] No.43618654[source]▶
A lot of the time, a lack of bugfixes comes from the incentive structure management has created. Specifically, you rarely get rewarded for fixing things. You get rewarded for shipping new things. In effect, you're punished for fixing things because that's time you're not shipping new things.

Ownership is another one. For example, product teams who are responsible for shipping new things but support for existing things get increasingly pushed onto support teams. This is really a consequence of the same incentive structure.

This is partially why I don't think that all subscription software is bad. The Adobe end of the spectrum is bad. The Jetbrains end is good. There is value in creating good, reliable software. If your only source of revenue is new sales then bugs are even less of a priority until it's so bad it makes your software virtually unusuable. And usually it took a long while to get there with many ignored warnings.

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1. tjoff ◴[08 Apr 25 07:47 UTC] No.43619318[source]▶
... but support for existing things get increasingly pushed onto support teams.

And support teams don't fix bugs?

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2. Ygg2 ◴[08 Apr 25 07:52 UTC] No.43619349[source]▶
You're removing autonomy from the support team, this will demoralize them.

The issue becomes, you have two teams, one moving fast, adding new features, often nonsensical to the support team, and the second one cleaning up afterward. Being in clean-up crew ain't fun at all.

This builds up resentment, i.e. "Why are they doing this?".

EDIT: If you make it so support team approval is necessary for feature team, you'll remove autonomy from feature team, causing resentment in their ranks (i.e. "Why are they slowing us down? We need this to hit our KPIs!").

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3. citrin_ru ◴[08 Apr 25 09:13 UTC] No.43619718[source]▶
On top of that support team often undeerstaffed and overloaded while feature pushers get more positions.
4. yencabulator ◴[09 Apr 25 16:05 UTC] No.43633643[source]▶
Some 20+ years ago we solved this by leapfrogging.

  Team A does majority of new features in major release N.
  Team B for N+1.
  Team A for N+2.

  Team A maintains N until N+1 ships.
  Team B maintains N+1 until N+2 ships.