llm/3a862c31-848e-4e32-be93-99402d2b43b6/batch-7-99131c84-8d4b-48da-94b4-71764ad82892-input.json
You are a comment classifier. Given a list of topics and a batch of comments, assign each comment to up to 3 of the most relevant topics.
TOPICS (use these 1-based indices):
1. Bugs Having Users at Scale
2. Automation Impact on Workers
3. Workplace Politics vs Technical Skills
4. Google's UX Quality Criticism
5. LLM-Assisted Writing Detection
6. Career Advancement and Networking
7. Clarity vs Cleverness in Code
8. User-Focused Engineering Culture
9. Innovation Tokens and Boring Technology
10. Abstraction and Complexity Management
11. Silent Resistance in Debates
12. Glue Work Recognition
13. Performance Optimization Strategies
14. Engineer-Customer Communication Barriers
15. Time vs Money Tradeoffs
16. Psychological Safety in Teams
17. Process and Bureaucracy Critique
18. Code Plagiarism Ethics
19. Big Tech Organizational Dysfunction
20. Goodhart's Law and Metrics Gaming
COMMENTS TO CLASSIFY:
[
{
"id": "46491508",
"text": "There is a lot of nuance to their point. They are saying, in the long run, career wise, focusing on the actual user matters and makes your projects better.\n\nGoogle UX is decent and the author was not trying to comment on UX as a thing at Google. More that, if you follow the user what you are doing can be grounded and it makes your project way more likely to succeed. I would even argue that in many cases it bucks the trend. The author even pointed out, in essence there is a graveyard of internal projects that failed to last because they seemed cool but did nothing for the user."
}
,
{
"id": "46491726",
"text": "> Google UX is decent and the author was not trying to comment on UX as a thing at Google.\n\nInteresting, so he was not, contrary to the blog title, writing on the basis of his 14 years of experience at Google?"
}
,
{
"id": "46491941",
"text": "Read their point 1 carefully. They are saying, when you are building something or trying to solve a problem (for internal or external users) if you follow the user obsessively you will have a far better outcome that aligns with having impact and long term success. This does imply thinking about UX, but transitively, IMO."
}
,
{
"id": "46492047",
"text": "I am not sure I follow - is he, or is he not, writing about his experiences from 14 years at Google? The title suggests he does, yet you suggest that he does not?"
}
,
{
"id": "46493350",
"text": "Oh, I have no doubt they are at Google. I was just trying to say that the author was not really making a commentary on UX directly. The author was trying to make the point that understanding what sort of products and problems users have is a valid long term strategy for solving meaningful problems and attaching yourself to projects, within Google, that are more likely to yield good results. And if you, yourself, are doing this within Google it benefits you directly. A lot of arguments win and die on data, so if you can make a data driven argument about how users are using a system, or what the ground reality of usage in a particular system is and can pair that with anecdotal user feedback it can take you a long way to steering your own, and your orgs work, towards things that align well with internal goals and or help reset and re-prioritize internal goals."
}
,
{
"id": "46493035",
"text": "His learnings from 14 years at Google. Surely we've all learned things working for employers or with engineers that don't do a thing well.\n\nIn 14 years he probably also experienced great engineers come and go and start other successful businesses they very likely did not run exactly like Google."
}
,
{
"id": "46490713",
"text": "The short answer is that the UI isn’t optimized for users like you.\n\nI haven’t worked for Google specifically, but at this scale everything gets tested and optimized. I would guess they know power users like you are frustrated, but they know you’ll figure it out anyway. So the UX is optimized for a simpler target audience and possibly even for simpler help documents, not to ensure power users can get things done as quickly as possible."
}
,
{
"id": "46491227",
"text": "I feel like you're giving too much credit here. I don't know if it was a leak or an urban legend, but I remember the awful win 8 \"flat boxes UI\" being that way because it could be designed by managers in PowerPoint that way"
}
,
{
"id": "46491829",
"text": "The specific feature in question...there is nothing \"power\" about it. It was a non-feature for decades essentially, I dont recall ever not being able to simply change an e-mail address by moving the cursor and typing in something else. How on earth is this something tested and optimised, for whom exactly?"
}
,
{
"id": "46493441",
"text": "Google UI seemingly is optimized for happy path cases. Search for the obvious word and click a relevant link on the screen which appears. Write a single response to a single email and abandon than conversation afterwards, always use new conversations for every new email. Click a recommended video thumbnail on the frontpage and then continue with autoplay. Put only short defined text type in the cells of a spreadsheet, like date/number/text etc. And so on with all of their products.\n\nBut as soon as user tries to search for something no on the first page, or reply to a 10-20+ message thread with attachments in history, or tries to use playlists or search in YT, or input a slightly more complex data in the sheet cells - then all hell breaks loose.\n\nJust the latest Google thing I've experienced - a default system Watch Later playlist is now hidden on Android. It's gone, no traces, no way to search for it. The only remnant of it is a 2-second popup after adding a new video to Watch Later, y"
}
,
{
"id": "46491252",
"text": "This is almost certainly not the case. The larger the company the more change is viewed as a negative. Yes people may hold titles to do the things you describe but none are empowered to make change."
}
,
{
"id": "46490940",
"text": "This is definitely an edge case. Most UI/UX from Google is very consistent and just works. Otherwise they won't be in this market.\n\nOnly UI/UX issue is that most experienced users want to not adapt to change. It is like people always telling Windows 7 is the best. Don't keep reinventing.\n\nAnother one that irks me is every UI/UX dev assumes people have 2 x 4K monitors and menu items overflow."
}
,
{
"id": "46491608",
"text": "> Only UI/UX issue is that most experienced users want to not adapt to change\n\nUsers will not only adapt, but will even champion your changes if they make sense to said users. For example the web checkout or to name a more drastic example, iPhone and fingers as user interface devices. Once you start convincing the users that the interface is great, but they are too resistant to changes/dumb/uncreative to know how use it... its a different story I´d reckon ;)"
}
,
{
"id": "46490704",
"text": "which company's product has great UX? I'm always seeing people hating on things without showcasing examples of what they think is exemplary"
}
,
{
"id": "46497361",
"text": "Nothing is perfect, but here are a few things I enjoy using:\n\nhttps://www.geogebra.org/calculator\n\nhttps://regex101.com/\n\nhttps://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/\n\nhttps://www.figma.com\n\nhttps://www.affinity.studio\n\nhttps://bluecinema.ch (To buy movie tickets for a certain movie chain in Switzerland. I haven't used this in many years, but at first glance it looks like I remember it. Back then, this was a very smooth experience both on desktop and mobile. Just perfectly done.)\n\nAny spreadsheet program (it's the spreadsheet itself, which I like, not necessarily how the UI is aranged around it)\n\nApple's Spotlight, GNOME's similiar thing (don't know the name)\n\nI also like Tantacrul's interface design work: https://www.youtube.com/@Tantacrul/videos"
}
,
{
"id": "46490947",
"text": "For the all the necessary complexity and race-to-the-bottom features, I am a fan of Jetbrains. I like using Uber, Twitch (wrote a plugin for it one weekend to integrate with chrome), Netflix, Discord. There are plenty of companies that manage to be enjoyable to end users and expose apis without the inscrutable abstractions and terminology I encounter using google products. It feels the same as working with Oracle."
}
,
{
"id": "46491768",
"text": "> Netflix\n\nNetflix? The barely functional video player accessed via excessively bloated thumbnail gallery? About the only good thing to say about this is that all the other movie streaming platforms somehow are even worse ."
}
,
{
"id": "46490974",
"text": "Its not hating - just stating the facts. Most companies unfortunately dont have a nice UX these days, because common UX practices like not making user think (i.e. overcomplicating the UIs) and not blocking users (showing annoying popups in the middle of UI workflows) somehow became a lost art. Some products are inherently easy to use like draw.io for example. I really like the UX on Stripe, in particular their onboarding process. There is also a semi-famous e-commerce company, in the furniture space. I forgot their name (something with W?), but I ordered something once, and was really impressed by how smooth and uncomplicated the process from browsing the inventory to checkout and delivery itself was."
}
,
{
"id": "46490898",
"text": "None. A great UX nowadays is open source software running on your own hardware.\n\nFor example, you couldn't pay me to use a \"webmail\" like GMail over my own IMAP server and Thunderbird."
}
,
{
"id": "46491384",
"text": "As somebody who already does this, I wouldn't say the Thunderbird's UX is the real motivation.\n\nI do it for autonomy and avoiding lock-in, but Thunderbird has some frustrating inconsistencies particularly in its mishmash of searching and filtering."
}
,
{
"id": "46490944",
"text": "why would a great UX be tied to the source being open or not?"
}
,
{
"id": "46491268",
"text": "Because if you don’t like the UX you just edit the source code yourself and make it better /s\n\n/s but I wish it wasn’t because a lot of FOSS evangelists have this mindset (here on HN too)"
}
,
{
"id": "46492646",
"text": "More seriously - open source software is resistant to enshittification. It's obviously not a panacea, but the possibility of forks (or just the user deciding not to update), combined with the difference in profit motive, tends to result in software that respects the user.\n\n(Taken holistically, the UX of software does not just mean the UI, or the moments when you are using the software. It also includes the stability of the software over time, including whether or not you are able to reject new versions whether you do not like.)"
}
,
{
"id": "46494852",
"text": "This. The only real risk with open source is that a (fairly niche) project is discontinued/abandoned, and you can't find binaries anymore for it anymore (and you don't have the skills to build it yourself). But this happens to proprietary software all the time (see killedbygoogle.com)."
}
,
{
"id": "46491267",
"text": "How's that? VLC, GIMP, Ubuntu search and settings. Terrible. Great products, awedul UX."
}
,
{
"id": "46491774",
"text": "VLC is great I think."
}
,
{
"id": "46490961",
"text": "Wow.. you are the one loving thunderbird. The ridiculous idea of removing menubar and if you enable that - it wastes valuable screenspace."
}
,
{
"id": "46490801",
"text": "Omni Group. Wolfram. Parts of Apple. Rhino3D. Parts of Breville. Prusa (on device, not on desktop). Speed Queen (dial-based). Just from applications I currently have open and devices I can see from where I'm sitting."
}
,
{
"id": "46490875",
"text": "I mean something that has a clear Google analog/equivalent that way can compare on. I personally think Wolfram Alpha (assuming that's what you're talking about) isn't any better than Google."
}
,
{
"id": "46493129",
"text": "Never really used Alpha, was talking about Mathematica.\n\nI don’t the the web is compatible with good UX, but that doesn’t mean good UX isn’t possible — it just means that the companies that are successful at UX build native applications, or physical objects, or both."
}
,
{
"id": "46490951",
"text": "I would say basically everything that has won a an Apple Design Award before 2020.\n\nThings for macOS for example."
}
,
{
"id": "46490843",
"text": "No one's. Everyone sucks. Find a product and you'll find a population collating complaints about it. Whining about interface design is like the cheapest form of shared currency in our subculture.\n\nFundamentally it's a bikeshed effect. Complaining about hard features like performance is likely to get you in trouble if you aren't actually doing the leg work to measure it and/or expert enough to shout down the people who show up to argue. But UI paradigms are inherently squishy and subjective, so you get to grouse without consequences."
}
,
{
"id": "46490963",
"text": "I think the UX issues you’re describing are less related to culture changes in companies and more just in the industry in general\n\nUX are designed by and for people who don’t really use computers. They use mobile devices and tablets\n\nIt’s an industry wide phenomenon"
}
,
{
"id": "46491397",
"text": "You are onto something there, if you mean, the design roles being taken over by the people who are not techies - like the POs. But if you just refer to UX being designed for mobile devices - that is not an excuse for an even worse UX on the mobile. If anything I would have expected more effort put in there, given how many more issues the limited screen estate can cause..."
}
,
{
"id": "46492125",
"text": "It’s designed for virtual keyboards rather than real ones\n\nThat makes a bigger difference than screen space"
}
,
{
"id": "46490608",
"text": "You can learn something at a company by observing it’s weaknesses as well as strengths"
}
,
{
"id": "46491946",
"text": "> I wonder why Google UX always sucked so much\n\nIt depends on how you define \"suck.\"\n\nWhen Google first launched it's homepage, its emptiness (just a logo & search box) was a stark contrast to the portal pages popular, which were loaded with content.\n\nSome thought the Google homepage \"sucked\" whereas other liked it. (I was in the latter.)\n\nLikewise, the interface for Gmail. Or the interface for Google Maps. Or the interface for Chrome."
}
,
{
"id": "46492116",
"text": "I remember when Google appeared and literally can't recall anyone who thought it sucked. There statistically have to be some people who hated it. But everyone I knew was either on dial-up or low bitrate leased line and it was impossible to dislike that design."
}
,
{
"id": "46495635",
"text": "I remember it too!\n\nBut not everyone was on dial-up. A lot were in dorms w/ (for the time) high speed connections or workplaces with it.\n\nRemember at the time it wasn't clear that search was going to be the dominate pattern for how people found information on the web. It seems crazy now, but in the early days of the web, the space was small enough that a directory-style approach worked pretty well. It was Yahoo's directory that made it initially popular, not its search.\n\nAnd so there was a fair bit of debate on which was better -- something like a directory + search (a la Yahoo!) vs just search.\n\nIt took a bit of time before search proved if it was done really well, you didn't need a directory."
}
,
{
"id": "46491107",
"text": "As a developer I took the writer's point to refer to \"users\" generically, so that even if you work on some internal tools or a backend layer, you still have users who have to use your app or consume your API and there is a lot of learning possible if you communicate and understand them better."
}
,
{
"id": "46492030",
"text": "Probably the users he is talking about are not the end users like you and me. It is one team using the tools/software of the other team and so \"users\" for that other team are the members of the first team."
}
,
{
"id": "46491541",
"text": "I see it differently then UX at all. I find the need for better customer support 1000x more pertinent to helping users."
}
,
{
"id": "46491672",
"text": "I'd like YouTube to add a button to stop showing scam ads from people outside my country."
}
,
{
"id": "46491875",
"text": "Is there a big tech company that actually has good UX, besides maybe Apple?"
}
,
{
"id": "46493087",
"text": "I know Apple has a reputation for good UX but I think it's carry over from a different era and it's trending down.\n\nI bought my kid an iPad for Christmas and set up parental controls, then could not disable it without another iPad (which I don't have).\n\nThere are many forum threads concluding you just have to factory reset.\n\nI couldn't believe how many little unintuitive things I bumped into setting it up."
}
,
{
"id": "46491537",
"text": "> Every single one of their services is a pain to use\n\nWould you like to sign in to Google?"
}
,
{
"id": "46491614",
"text": "To me; point #3 is the big one and it is in conflict with point #1"
}
,
{
"id": "46493137",
"text": "How so? Those two together is literally agile; not as I've seen it done, but as it's intended. Learn, iterate, repeat."
}
,
{
"id": "46491988",
"text": "> very single one of their services is a pain to use\n\nUhm, no? Google Cloud Platform is way more convenient to use than AWS, the IAM is way better designed, and documentation is leagues ahead of AWS."
}
,
{
"id": "46490714",
"text": "> wonder why Google UX always sucked so much and in particularly in the recent years seem to be getting even worse\n\nUX? Google doesn't even bother helping folks locked out of their Gmail accounts. For people who use Android (some 3bn), that's like a digital death sentence, with real-world consequences.\n\nIt is almost comical that anyone would think Google is customer-focused, but might if they were being paid handsomely to think otherwise, all the while drinking a lot of kool-aid.\n\nhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36024754 The top comment there is from a Xoogler which sums it up nicely:\n\nThe thing is that at scale your edge cases are still millions of people. Companies love the benefits that come from scale, like having a billion people use their service, but they never seem to be capable of handling the other parts that come with it :(\n\nGoogle rakes in $100bn a quarter; that's $1bn every day."
}
]
Return ONLY a JSON array with this exact structure (no other text):
[
{
"id": "comment_id_1",
"topics": [
1,
3,
5
]
}
,
{
"id": "comment_id_2",
"topics": [
2
]
}
,
...
]
Rules:
- Each comment can have 0 to 3 topics
- Use 1-based topic indices
- Only assign topics that are genuinely relevant to the comment
- If no topics match, use an empty array:
{
"id": "...",
"topics": []
}
50