On Monday, September 22, 2014 2:44:13 PM UTC+2, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 03:02:39 -0700 (PDT), robobass

wrote:





The question still stands. When do companies design stuff to be overly



complex. What's the real end goal?



It's often not intentional, just a mindset. I used to design motorized displays for a toy company. The bases would show the kinetic aspects of the toys. I would get a proposed design from their engineers, and come in the next day with revisions that would sometimes halve the cost with no loss of performance or reliability. I had no real motive to save them money, I just like simplicity and abhor waste. Most of my suggestions would be shot down just because they were perceived as cutting corners.



I wonder how much of that shooting down was covering for the "We

couldn't charge as much for it, so it would be less profitable" line

of thought.


I don't think this was the case. It seemed that the company was paying for the displays. The boss just liked to see lots of fasteners, necessary or not.