• 0 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

help-circle







  • This sounds almost identical to the script our former VP of PM parroted. Everyone in engineering was vehemently opposed. But the C suite loved it, so we switched to a subscription model. Guess what, NEMs and govt clients don’t like paying subscriptions. No one does, but these are huge, powerful business entities we’re talking about here. You can’t force their hand. We lost 3 of our 4 biggest clients within 6 months. It took a massive amount of work to reverse course.

    Just admit it. Subscriptions are nothing more than a blatant money grab. We (the SW industry) have been successfully releasing software and making fucktonnes of money for decades before some bean counter decided to get too greedy and come up with this bullshit.



  • There’s actually quite a lot of software that monetises similarly to what you’re proposing. DxO and Ableton, just off the top of my head. Millions of happy users between those 2.

    You get minor version updates for “free” (included in the one-time purchase). Upgrades to the next major version are discounted. Don’t need the features in the next major version? Stick with what you have for however long it works for you.

    It’s by far my favourite model because it allows the developers to get paid, whilst not squeezing my neck. Everyone’s happy.





  • Because, in general, the dev and the code reviewer(s) can’t accurately predict the impact of the changes. It’s a consequence of having a massive and complex code base. Now, best practices say that they should have automation in place that runs before the pull request can be approved, that tests against regression and unintended consequences. But, far too often, these things are deprioritised by management because of the “ship it now, we’ll fix it later” mindset.

    To put it more succinctly, infinite profit growth is the reason everything is shit.