Addicted to Addition: The Hidden Costs of Feature Bloat in Tech

The bigger you get, the harder it gets to kill features.

The systems that get set up reward new feature launches.

PM wants to get promoted
↳ Calibration asks: What big thing did they ship?

Sales wants to reach out to an old lead
↳ Ops asks: What new features can we talk about?

Company wants to evaluate an engineer
↳ The rubrics ask: What new things did they make happen?

Meanwhile, many times removing a feature can do more good than creating a new one.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗼𝘅 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

It’s more insidious than at first mention.

As our systems increasingly get built up to disincentivize feature deprecation is precisely when we need it most.

𝟭: 𝗪𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗴 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁

When we get big and complex, entire teams and functions are spun up against things that need to be killed.

For instance, a marketplace team gets spun up in the business org — but what happens when you need to kill the marketplace feature?

Managers begin to worry. “Without the feature, will my team be smaller?” So, they block the move.

Check out the full deep-dive here.

𝟮: 𝗪𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼

Most startups begin with a founder and some engineers, a designer. Then slowly, giant non-product organizations get spun up: Customer support, sales, marketing…

They’re all essential. But each of these functions also generates product demands.

This results in the development of:

• Stakeholder-driven features
• Features for niches
• And other garbage that clutters our product

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀.

Indeed, the bigger these organizations get, the more they think the small feature for their niche is absolutely the most important thing in the world.

Do you see it now? All the incentives in companies work against making good choices to kill features.

The result is: we don’t actually ever kill anything.