In the long run it always costs more, but some exec can put a big cost savings on the quarterly report (at the expense of future quarters). Very near sighted.
In the case where development is outsourced (which I don’t think is the case with Wyze), all it means is each thing you request costs money, which in the long run costs more than the in house developers used to make. So in reality the “cost savings” comes from simply not improving or even fixing your stuff so as not to incur those expenses.
Unfortunately in general, the public accepts it. People threaten to go to another company, and sometimes they do, but then they find that other company is just as bad or even worse. If it was causing mass customer loss, it wouldn’t be the status quo. But then, there isn’t really much choice, so for the most part customer loss and customer gain balance out and people just keep cycling to different companies.
Kind of like those car insurance commercials where somehow everyone saves hundreds by switching to every company, which simply isn’t possible, that’s not how math works. In reality, this year one company is cheaper, so the people that switch save money, then next year that company raises rates and now the other company is cheaper, people switch back. Obviously people aren’t switching if it costs more.
You and I have clearly had similar experiences and see this the same way. Whether development is outsourced or off-shored, it almost always takes far longer and costs more than anyone admits. By outsourced, I mean work handed to a separate third-party firm being paid for each change or fix. By off-shored, I mean the company builds its own team in another country for lower labor rates. Different structures, same outcome, timelines stretch.
What’s almost always forgotten, or conveniently overlooked, is the reality of execution that causes timelines to extend and costs to climb: time-zone gaps that make collaboration and releases harder, language barriers, cultural differences that affect speed and clarity, and the extra cycles of review, rework, and coordination required to get to the same result. The theory is lower cost. The reality is it takes multiples of time to get the same work done. Every time. The usual result is lower quality, much longer build cycles, exhausted internal teams revisiting the same issues repeatedly, delayed releases that leave broken or underperforming code in production, and a total cost that ends up far higher than anyone modeled at the start or that anyone will admit.
I’ve also been frustrated with many interactions I’ve had with Wyze Support, but that’s the primary means I’m aware of for contacting Wyze directly. As I noted in the post you replied to, the Forum is mainly community members trying to assist other members, and I think often that provides better results for some because these are people who have actual experience with the products; however, if there’s a server or code issue (app, firmware), remedy for that will have to come directly from Wyze, and their participation in any part of the Forum is not guaranteed.
Because only Wyze employees can create topics in the Wyze News and Beta categories, I often recommend that users who believe an issue is specifically related to a particular app or firmware release post to the relevant announcement topic for that release version, and that’s also why being aware of and sharing the versions of things in use are important. Also, Wyze employees will sometimes actively solicit Log IDs and Personal Messages from users in some topics where a lot of users seem to be affected by the same issue, but that’s pretty hit-or-miss; I don’t know of a way to predict that kind of engagement.
There were a couple of posts from a Wyze Intern that were pinned in Cameras a few days ago and then moved to Wyze News earlier today for better visibility in an “official” category. Glad you found it.
This is one of the things I’ve commented on many times and continues to be a major frustration for me personally.
He manages several communities—not just Wyze Forum—so I think he’s frequently pulled in several directions. I wouldn’t sweat the lack of a direct response. That’s a lot to manage. If you think a particular topic needs more attention, then you can try mentioning @Mavens, and that might get a faster response since it’s a group and not a single person, but please be aware that we are community volunteers and not Wyze employees.
I remember when the feature was introduced in the original 3.x app, it caused my Panv3s to not want to load on other screens without closing and reopening the app, so figured potentially live stream on favorites might be part of the issue (or at least making it more evident). It makes sense in a way, things don’t tend to like when you try to repeatedly connect and disconnect in short succession, especially if one hasn’t finished before you try the next.
I’ve unfortunately had the pleasure of experiencing the newer blended model where it is an outsourced 3rd party company (WiPro and TCS being two of the bigger ones and have worked with both), but the employees are made contractors of your company and set up in more of an “offshore” model. The worst of both worlds.
When I first got into the industry decades ago, development being offshored to Ireland was common and even with the time zone differences, actually worked pretty well. But the iterations we’ve been seeing with Asian countries (India mostly, and now Malaysia) is where everything went downhill. They literally recruit people off the street and give them a script and no further training (for support roles) or take someone with some programming experience and expect them to work on an app or database they’ve never seen before without any sort of “bringing up to speed”. Again, the blame goes to the rich owner of the company who has a penthouse overlooking the slums that his employees live in, not the employees themselves.
As frustrating as it is to be a customer of one of those companies, it is arguably worse to be an employee relying on that staff for support, especially when the customers complain to you, not them.
I’ve just changed from a public company to a private one. While neither is immune, I’m hoping that the mentality of boosting near term numbers at the expense of long term ones will be significantly reduced (as it was as the last private company I worked for).
When your multimillion dollar bonus doesn’t rely on making investors happy for a day and the stock price going up a bit (temporarily), things tend to be better thought out. But knocking on wood just in case.
@PCHearn, to paraphrase a joke I was told … when there are so many that you cannot count the number of happy customers, then you can say the customers are happy, but for now, the number of unhappy customers seems to be the countless number.
I would be a bit happier if someone at Wyze would update us on their progress fixing the problem. It has been 2 weeks since I first posted on here about it.
