Profit Takes Priority Over Quality Today

With the launch of the new iPhone and iOS 18 we conclude that it terms of hardware we don’t have any improvements. Technology is starting to become more and more feature based and not hardware based.

More RAM or a better CPU doesn’t really matter anymore because we reached to a point that there are not any major improvements in terms of speed, even if we have a better CPU.

But for the last few years with the raise of LLMs as well, new features are easier to implement than ever. Also you can’t really compete anymore in terms of features because there are thousands of startups launching every day that for sure out compete you in terms of features.

4-5 years ago it was harder for a startup to launch and it took much time to build the product. Now on Product Hunt we have over 100 launches per week. Most of the products are actually good.

More features more problems.

Companies are starting to launch more stupid, useless features to justify higher prices and make investors happy. They are don’t really needed. This happens because people think that speed is the key, but you can always run as fast. Speed has a limit, efficiency and quality doesn’t.

Profit is now the new God for these companies. As we know from history having money as God is not the best thing to do. They have to make more money. Doesn’t really matter if the make millions or billions they just have to make more money.

This is why I love more value or efficiency driven companies like X, TinyGrad or Comma.ai. Yes they care about money, but it is not their primary goal.

Competing in terms speed, will always make your product more expensive not necessarily better. Let’s take for example OpenAI. They released their faster model in terms of speed last. First they hyped up to sell more on their powerful models that are too expensive to use anyway. Just for the shake of profit.

They don’t really about people, people are just numbers for them. They want money and they will do anything about it.

What is quality?

Being efficient means not having millions in the bank doing nothing. Startups making over $50k per month with just one employee are often overpriced and making more money than needed.

Monetization and speed are the main goals of most SaaS businesses because they want more profit. The money they make isn't always put to good use. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with profit, but software is becoming expensive because we've stopped coding with passion.

UX suffers as platforms like YouTube put ads everywhere, making it hard to watch videos. Most social media platforms allow ads on almost any topic, focusing on money rather than user experience.

Companies like roadmap.sh or Telegram actually care about their users and the value they provide. They don't make as much money, but you get a product that's free or has minimal monetization, making a fair amount of money while offering a beneficial tool or app.

Conclusion

Stop caring about the money and starting to work with love is going to make not only the community better but also the world. Because we may not understand it but as engineers our job can actually make the world a better place.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you found this article helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at x@sotergreco.com, and I will respond.

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