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Ask HN: What's with all the sloppy work? What's happened to quality?

15 points by samh748 ↗ HN
It's bugged me for a long time but it seems so much of the working world is filled with sloppy, poorly done jobs. Maybe not the tech jobs and other higher-paying jobs, but definitely the lower-paying jobs where people are only concerned with fulfilling the most minimal of duties. It's understandable of course, so I don't blame the people, but I'm still quite bothered by the lack of attention people give to their work. My guess is that it has to do with our culture's increasing obsession with speed and "efficiency", rather than quality of work. And it's impossible to take any pride in your work if an organization's bottom line is speed, so much so that any attention paid to quality can become detrimental. Amazon comes to mind, but I see it in many other companies, small and large.

Do you observe this as well? Is it a trend, or has it always been like this? Are there ways to restore pride and quality in people's work?

12 comments

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uberman
I see the same thing as well but I also see it in tech and other high paying jobs.

The overall pressure for short term gains at the expense of other objectives is what I blame.

rossdavidh
The reality is closer to the "it has always been like this" end of the spectrum, than to the other end. But, it makes some sense that software which you will be working on for 20+ years is more worth optimizing than software which you will never see again after 1-2 years from now, because you will switch jobs or the company will get bought and forced to switch to the buying company's preferred language or any of a dozen other reasons.

But, in the course of my career I've looked at a lot of really old software as well, and it wasn't better. I've never worked on COBOL, but people I know who have, were not impressed and don't miss doing it. So I think it has always been the case in software that most work is done in a manner which is later cause for regret.

codingdave
No, I find that people notice poor quality more, but good quality work is all around us. If something just works, people don't even notice it. Look around you - how many everyday objects are sitting there working just fine and you never even think about it. That is a sign of quality work by someone.

Certainly there are low quality items and services and workers. But I really do think there is more good than bad, and am constantly amazed at the detail, thoughtfulness, and professionalism that many people do put into their work.

groffee
It's interesting, on the one hand I hate the lack of quality and lack of pride people take in their work, BUT on the other hand the majority of my income comes from fixing other peoples bugs.

If other people could code properly I'd be out of a job.

helij
I am in my fifth decade of life and quality has never been so good. All products and services I use on a daily basis are of better quality than 20 years ago.

Now onto low-paying jobs, products and services. Due to low payment those shouldn't even be of high quality - just good enough, fulfilling the most minimal of duties as you say.

demygale
My daily driver OS crashed multiple times a day 20 years ago and laptop hardware was sus at best. So yeah, I think quality is better. Also, look at cars. So much better with every decade that passes. It’s incredible.
bruce511
Quality and cost are two opposite ends if the scale. One end optimises for lowest cost, the other for maximum quality.

In truth quality is always getting better for less money - my 70's car required me to be a part-time mechanic, whereas my current car runs forever between services.

Minimum wage generates minimum quality, and you can call both macdonalds and Peter luger "restaurants".

The progression is a curve, not a line, the best value for money is about half way along the curve.

dusted
In things like construction, I don't think it's entirely because the quality of the work is getting worse, it's probably more that as engineering has improved, we're building closer to the margins, and so sloppy work more often has consequences. I have a house from 1945, and the material dimensions indicate that nobody ever calculated anything, they looked at some beam and though "that ought to do it" usually to the good side. Various hacks I've seen around old houses tell the same story.. So with everything massively overdimensioned, there is plenty of room for error without any consequence.

For things like customer service, I partly blame software and internet.. It's about margins again, profit margins this time, and as cut down as they are in many areas, there's simply no way to compete if you employ actual human beings that can actually solve customer problems.. Much better just to let those caught in edge-cases crash and burn, this high churn means nothing and it'd be very unprofitable to provide a high quality of customer service.

faangiq
“Western” capitalism happened.
eanc
I puzzle over how, out in the open source world, so much seems to have shifted from testing for a while before releasing to just releasing and acting like it was normal that there turned out to be lots of bugs. Or never releasing at all and expecting others to use whatever happens to be in git right this moment.
paulcole
Every other job-question thread on here is, “jump jobs every 2 years (or less).” When that’s the best way to get a big raise or promotion, who’s gonna care about the person after you cleaning up your mess?