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Admin
because im frist, im frist, u no it
Admin
Title seems to have attracted an interesting crowd...
Admin
Yes, they didn't bother to read the article!
I thought they determined there was no bloat - 3 compilers * Debug * Release * x86 * x64 * itanium = at least 18 versions
Admin
Correct. And when unpicking the mess crashed the company, they dropped that part of the work.
Admin
It doesn't sound like it was "unpicking the mess" that crashed the company, it sounds like the COO didn't understand software sales and licensing at all. As in if a majority of your customers are willing to pay an inflated price for your GUI+toolkit to just use the GUI, you probably shouldn't offer a GUI only option unless you've done some market research to determine that there's a significant chunk of the market who aren't current customers but who might buy just the GUI if you offered it at a reduced price. Significant enough to offset the losses from your current customers who are going to flee to the cheaper option as soon as its offered.
Admin
The exec responsible for tanking the company's profits didn't get fired because of course he didn't.
Maybe the CFO should have had his people do an analysis to determine how the market would respond to the COO's dumb idea?
Just to show how no good deed goes unpunished, when you deliver a project on time even with an unreasonable, uninformed due date in a Chief Engineer Scotty manner, the low-information manager who set the due date says "I told you so" instead of "good job".
Admin
Exactly! What kind of sales guy hears "people are willing to pay 100% of the price to use 10% of the product" and says "well we'd better start giving them a better deal then!"
Admin
Oh for cryin' out loud! Sell the GUI only toolkit for a 10% discount of the bundled package price. Then raise the price of the bundled package 50%.
Admin
The mess that crashed the company was "unbundle the GUI part because most of our customers pay for the full package to use just the GUI part" and consequently revenues went through the floor.
Unpicking the mess was "don't unbundle the GUI part any more".
They did that the only way they knew would work without worries: "undo the work the so-called hero did".
Admin
No, I'm with guest on this one. TRWTF happened when the PHB decided to provide a better deal to two thirds of their customer base who would now pay less for their product. From that point onwards it didn't matter HOW WT and his team approached the problem. It was doomed to result in a lack of profits and abundant layoffs.
TRWTF, naturally, is that someone who tried really hard to crash the company got to keep his paycheck while those who actually added value were sacked.
Admin
stop making sense!
Admin
No - that is what happens every time. It would be a RWTF if the marketing/sales/etc. idiot got fired and they kept all the dev/ops/QA team.
Admin
I like the name of the company "Prepackaged Pixels". Does TDWTF get a residual when that name gets into a Sitcom? Sounds like an ideal name for a company there.
Admin
Trolltech and QT. Sizes and n-plication sounds about correct. Not sure about licensing. (Didn't pay that much attention to them)
Admin
Trolltech/QT was my first thought as well...
Admin
TRWTF is that they didn't sell the GUI for the price they knew people would pay for it, and raise the price of the bundle. The whole story smacks of neo-antisemitism with the 'but of course the Jew who screwed us all didn't get fired' ending.
Admin
You have people who are paid to write code and produce a product. Then you have people who are paid to turn that product into money.
If two thirds of my customers pay 100% of the price but need only 50% of the product, and I start offering that 50% for 50% of the price, it should be obviously to anyone with more than two brain cells that you will end up with happy customers and a company losing money.
Admin
Are you a Bruce trying to deflect blame with cries of anti-Semitism?
This is just how many operations work. These people aren't running a business with clear plans towards a clear goal. They're spoiled brats playing games on what they think is a personal playground. When their toys (employees) don't do what they want, they smash (fire) them in a tantrum.
Single-minded worship of money and authority is what perpetuates this. There are lots of people out there who actually believe WT and the others laid were the villain in this picture and should be grateful benevolent all-knowing Bruce allowed them to bask in his glow for a time before giving them what they deserve for not having marketable skills or not delivering value (whatever the hell that is in their warped minds) or whatever the du-jour slam against working people is these days. It's warped and it has nothing to do with imaginary anti-Semitism.
Admin
It was not an obviously bad plan. If there had been enough potential customers who were willing to buy the scaled-down product at a lower price, the increased sales might have more than made up for the loss of revenue from customers who were willing to pay the higher price but only use 10% of the product. There's no way to know if the plan is good or bad without having some idea of what the market is. If the company made no effort to determine this, that was dumb. If they did some market research or even had anecdotal evidence, and it turned out to be wrong, then that's bad for the company but not obviously stupid.
Admin
Like, seriously, how did we get Jews involved in this? Oy.
Admin
The only person who made the connection to Jews is you, in your brain. You're missing a logical step in the journey to "Jews" from "people who are shortsighted and make poor managerial decisions based on unrefined greed." That connection is made in your brain and yours alone. No one mentioned them before you did.
Admin
If the story is to be believed, then two-thirds of their customer base is only interested in the GUI toolkit. That means that, for example, if they priced the GUI-only license at $50 and left the bundle at $150, they'd lose $100 revenue from two-thirds of their individual customers, which is massive. It seems almost as if the manager made the wrong decision after analyzing, but these stories are also embellished, so it's hard to tell how much the idio-- uh, executive knew.
Admin
Easy solution: split the 32/64 binaries in 2 separate installers, get rid of the debug binaries. There, you cut the size of your installer by 75%. This should take 2 days at the most, why wasn't that done on day 1?
Admin
Erik was a bit more prescient than we thought. The real layoffs came a few weeks after I had posted this WTF, and they caught a number of good people -- not just me. Exercise for the reader: what role did Brucey get to play in the lay-off?
I have a few bills to worry about, but I'm much happier dealing with them than to ever again have to mine for Brillance out of Brucey's dumb ideas.
Of course, the layoffs weren't really about this penny-ante lower-case wtf. The layoffs that got me were just a single shock wave from one of the greatest WTFs never told -- far beyond Brucey's capacity. I suppose Erik might call this MOAWTF the "Pixel MarketPlace of Horrors".