Quality Means Not Accepting Crap

Software. Hardware. Things. Opinions. Places. Excuses. Ideas.

Anyone can produce a cheap "affordable" solution. But details matter. How many cheap plastic things have broken in your hands unexpectedly, and were entirely disappointing in that moment?

My AirBnB is not that. I knew "quality" when I saw it. You can tell someone lived in this thing and made it convenient for them, then handed it off to you. That's quality, making something that meets your own standards, then giving it to someone else.

I travel a lot, enough to know what matters on a trip. Leg room on the plane. Working wifi. Power plugs, everywhere. Politeness. Clean bathrooms. Details matter.

Conversely, a $300/night hotel room only to have plugs too far away from the bed, lamp toggle buttons that take so much effort to push that you push the lamp over, light switches that are harder to find than Carmen Sandiego; the annoyances all add up too. The lights in this camper that I'm staying in are easy to use and don't cause me to cuss.

Same with software, details matter.

Quality software comes from people using their own product, living in it, fixing its flaws, and asking others how their experience with it is. In the tech industry, we call it "dogfooding" your own product. Believe me, it works.

People intrinsically know "quality" when they experience it. They pick up a phone, it's heavy and solid, they think "that's quality". Conversely, they close a car door and it rattles or sounds hollow, they think "that's cheap". Even the sounds shipped with your mobile phone help to engineer your perception of the quality of the device.

Quality is in the details.

Oh, and BTW, I'd also rather put a constraint on myself not to over-drink and stumble into a $450/night on-premise room way too late at night to wake up on time the next morning. I have business to attend to. Knowing when to quit starts with looking at a ridiculous estimate and just saying no:

So, even at only 3 nights, this would have cost $1,350 just for a room I would be spending around 4-6 hours a night in, and not getting all the charms of an outside shower and condensation on the windows each morning. The AirBnB alternative for all three nights, just 60% as compared to JUST ONE NIGHT AT THE SHERATON!

I should have remembered to check the crime overlay though, but Uber is a cheap solution to that problem: