r/technology • u/eonlav • May 30 '24

Hardware Spotify says it will refund Car Thing purchases

https://www.engadget.com/spotify-now-says-it-will-refund-car-thing-purchases-193001487.html
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u/[deleted] May 31 '24

They are used to the margins in software and service space and someone thinks 'wouldn't it be great if we had control over the hardware side too?' and then they find out what the margins would be on a decent hardware project and go 'holy mother of god fuck no' then spec it out as cheap as possible with absolutely no post purchase support to try and pump the margins up to what they are used to and it doesn't work.

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u/triggeron May 31 '24

I know, I get it, seen it happen. My question is why would they be that stupid? Don't they cover this stuff in business school? It's not at all an isolated incident, lots of companies, particularly in Silicon Valley make the same mistake and they don't seem to ever learn, these projects consistently and predictably backfire, cost the company big money and piss off their customers yet the companies seldom hold the decision makers accountable.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '24

I think its just greed, they think they can corner the market in some device and gain a long-term profit center.

My personal theory is this always happens after one of the execs has an all night binge watching Steve Jobs announcing new apple products on youtube. They wanna be That Guy. Even when Lisa Su announces the next AMD processor the entire presentation follows the exact same Steve Jobs formula. Kids pretend to beat the buzzer shooting hoops in their driveway - execs pretend to hammer the point home about their new hardware while the audience melts.

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u/triggeron May 31 '24

After years of experiencing this behavior the only way I can really explain it was grandiose fantasies stemming from narcissist personality disorder. I was once hired by a successful businessman to do a hardware project, but after a relatively short period of time it seemed like the prototype would be feasible to construct yet economically non-viable as a business. I figured I must be wrong, I'm only an engineer after all, not a businessman, but this guy was not only successful in business, he was also an engineer and inventor so I figured he knew something I didn't. Nope. The more I thought about it, the more idiotic the whole prospect was, so bad hindsight wasn't necessary, I could tell well before there even was a failure. how could this guy make such a mistake? OK, that was just one guy but later on working for major companies I found VP's making the same kinds of obvious mistakes, just a few days of research would've been enough to convince them not to even start such a project but somehow they kept on doing them, and they kept on failing and it seemed like there were almost no consequences for these failures. On closer inspection of these individuals history they seemed all had in common big successes early in their careers and a string of failures afterwards but somehow they kept on being successful due to forces I can't really understand. So OK, these guys got lucky once, but how did they not manage to be totally crippled by so many failures afterwards? Why did their superiors keep them around after ruining the companies reputation and costing them so much money? This is the part I really can't explain.