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The Synology End Game

(lowendbox.com)
452 points amacbride | 1 comments | 29 Aug 25 06:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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codeflo ◴[29 Aug 25 08:13 UTC] No.45061494[source]▶
The year is 2025. Delivering a good product is not considered profitable enough anymore. If a company or product is beloved by customers then that means it doesn't squeeze them to the max. This is clearly money left on the table that someone will sooner or later extract. High-end brands are not exempt from this.
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atlasduo ◴[29 Aug 25 08:25 UTC] No.45061575[source]▶
Easily explained: when times are tough, delivering growth naturally is hard. Squeezing the customer is the lowest hanging fruit.

Sure, long term reputation is severely damaged, but why would decision makers care? Product owners interests are not aligned with interests of the company itself. Squeeze the customer, get your miniscule growth, call it "unlocking value", get your bonus, slap it onto your resume and move on to the next company. Repeat until retirement.

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barnabee ◴[29 Aug 25 15:11 UTC] No.45065175[source]▶
When times are tough, accept less growth (or sometimes none) so that when times get good again or someone builds a competitor, all your customers don't leave you.
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1. immibis ◴[29 Aug 25 18:01 UTC] No.45067391{3}[source]▶
The real big brain move is to be your own competitor, so you extract value from customers either way. If they don't switch, you get to extract value via planned obsolescence and plain old extortion. If they do switch to avoid the extortion, you at least get to keep the price of their new NAS, and you weren't likely to get the extortion money anyway.

America has thousands of food brands but they're all owned by about 6 companies.