#Pocoanswers

[pocosun]

I just saw (and reblogged) a post from a few years ago in which you mentioned being a web developer and explained how to get past the "Disable Ad Blocker or Else" notices. I was wondering if you had an answer for this question:

Why do so many sites now have "subscribe to our newsletter" pop-ups that appear on every single visit to their site, and what power do web developers have to discourage this?

Stakeholders.

Stakeholders pay the business to make money so they typically get an unparalleled amount of power when it comes to decision making, even if it's bad decisions. The problem usually is that Stakeholders typically don't know enough about the business, or at least the metrics, to understand whether or not something is working. So typically, managers will assign a "good number" counter for stakeholders. In this case, the number is newsletter subscriptions.

Developers, at least in my experience, typically don't care unless they are told to care. Things like bug numbers, error counts, click events, and page views are usually more important. Unfortunately, since we are the ones being paid by stakeholders contributions, they are our like our long distance boss so we have to care about what they care about.

If Stakeholders feel like they aren't being listened to and can't tell if their investments are gaining money, they will pull out and then there is nothing to pay us 🤷