April 3, 2026
Copilot or Cope‑pilot?
Working on Products People Hate
Engineer says it’s okay to build hated products; comments explode in 'cope vs craft'
TLDR: An engineer argues it’s normal to ship unpopular products because companies set the rules, not users, and hate beats indifference. Comments erupted into a “cope vs craft” clash: some call it paycheck apathy, others blame capitalism, while a few defend tools like Copilot as useful anyway.
An engineer behind unloved tools—including parts of Zendesk’s marketplace and now GitHub Copilot—says you can’t always build crowd-pleasers and that engineers work for the company, not the user. Cue the fireworks. The post argues hate is better than indifference and sometimes limits must tighten or beloved products like Google Reader must die. Internet verdict? Spicy.
One camp dragged the take as pure cope. User tyleo basically said, “I choose love,” vowing to work at riskier companies if that’s what it takes to ship things people actually want. Another commenter, explodes, went scorched earth: calling the stance “hiding your neck to collect a paycheck,” and demanding hard talks and pivots instead of shrugging. Then abstractspoon dropped the black-pill: “Companies don’t want to delight users—they just want your money,” turning the thread into a capitalism roast.
But it wasn’t all doom. A quieter faction defended the work: codemog shrugged that Copilot “ain’t too bad,” especially compared to soul-sucking enterprise software. The memes followed: “Cope‑pilot,” “paycheck‑driven development,” and groans about corporate “box‑ticking” features. In short, the community split into three loud tables: the craft loyalists who want pride and pivots, the realists who say bills and budgets run the show, and the middle‑sitters admitting some “hated” tools are still helpful. Drama served hot.
Key Points
- •The author has worked on unpopular products such as Zendesk’s app marketplace and GitHub Copilot, alongside improvements to well-liked GitHub features.
- •He argues individual engineers have limited influence on product popularity in large companies due to team dynamics and incentive structures.
- •Engineering quality and user reception are not tightly correlated; well-engineered features can fail and poorly engineered ones can be beloved.
- •Engineers ultimately serve company goals and may need to implement decisions users dislike, such as usage limits or product shutdowns (e.g., Claude Code limits, Google Reader closure).
- •He warns against ignoring user feedback or over-identifying with users and frames the core responsibility as balancing company sustainability with user needs.