According to the FT, in a new show of disorientation, Yahoo outsourced one of its core products, the highly successful Yahoo IM, to the no-name three-coders-and-a-PR-rep company Jajah. The pretext: they will focus from now on on core products. Like what? Hotjobs? Yahoo Movies?
I learned today I wasted one full week by trying to work around some stupid bug of a ill-written, ill-documented software package that I use at work. I know that for a fact most visitors come to this blog to search workarounds for similar bugs in Microsoft Windows, Ahead Nero, Sun NetBeans, or Microsoft Visual Studio. I keep getting emails from crooks like SAS (emails without unsubscribe instructions, if we come to it) inviting me to join user groups and do the work that they are supposed to do - that is, explain the stupid programs that they wrote with its lack of documentation and its unjustifiable quirks to their frustrated, over-charged, and over-worked customers.
I know that people who make this software, both coders and (especially) managers, make far more money than, say, rice growers, although, arguably, they work less. They make so much because they can do so much; and surely they are productive when I, in my naivety, have worked for them, providing the world with the documentation they didn’t write.
What if I stop doing their work? I am thinking of calling it a day.