Comments by "username7763" (@username7763) on "No, You Don't Need Telemetry Data to Make Software" video.

A lot of bad product decisions have been made based off of usage data. People who's job it is to analyze data still make mistakes on misinterpreting results or having biases in the data set. But we expect product managers to somehow figure out what to build from this? I've seen software drop key features with no explanation. Maybe it isn't always because of telemetry but it sure is suspicious.
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I frequently get letters about some company that I never heard of has leaked all my information and here is some identity protection as compensation. How well do you trust tech companies to keep telemetry data anonymous and secure? I've worked for tech companies, I sure don't.
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@RenderingUser You seem to miss the point. Without telemetry data, you can still watch non-experts try out your software. But you get way more than a bunch of numbers, you are able to have human interactions to understand more on how well it works. But even without this, there are a ton of different IDEs and editors on the market because vim sucks. No one needs telemetry to know this.
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@gruntaxeman3740 nothing wrong with allowing a user to collect and send you logs. But this isn't what people mean by telemetry.
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@RenderingUser wouldn't you rather track the OS locale for this? It is less intrusive and gives you better information. Or, simply have it be a field on the bug report.
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@RenderingUser in some cases sure, but in other cases the averaging and combining hides important information. Software managers have no idea how to make informed use of data, thats not what they know.
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Sometimes managers need data in order to get approvals to do the right thing. So they cherry pick data or grab something that looks convincing no matter if it is right or not. "Our software is unstable and needs some core architectural work", unconvincing! won't do! "Our telemetry data shows how unstable our software is, see this pie chart." Ah, ok, go ahead! It's terrible in a lot of ways, but sometimes the ends really do justify the means.
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@mirror1766 as a web developer I can assure you that web devs don't card about following conventions, constancy, or even accessibility. We are too busy upgrading npm packages and adding marketing's latest branding. Gotta squeeze logos everywhere and add massive amounts of whitespace for the UX!
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