
How Software Companies Die - by Orson Scott Card  - wh-uws
http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees
======
jonnathanson
A fun read, but a reductive and somewhat cliched thesis. Software companies
don't die because they let the marketers take the reins. By the time that even
happens, the disease has already set in. The influx of suits is a symptom and
not a cause. Usually it's a symptom of one or more things:

1) The company has grown complacent;

2) The company has lost touch with its userbase, or with the landscape in
general, or with the competition;

3) The company has reached its liquidity event, at which point it's no longer
"cool," and cannot attract or retain top talent;

4) A bad investor, founder, or partner took control and started making poor
decisions, _or_ a great one ceded control and left;

5) The category is disrupted entirely.

There are many more root causes, but you get the idea. The suits don't
actually kill the company; they are just correlated with the death.

~~~
Figs
It may be cliché now, but was it cliché in 1995 (when it appears it was
written)?

~~~
jonnathanson
I would still argue yes. As a rule, a software company that knows what it's
doing doesn't allow marketers to take control of development in the way the
article describes. Ergo, by the time the marketers are invited into the
"hive," the company is already in a bad state because it is the sort of
company that now makes such decisions and puts such structures in place.

Furthermore, clueless marketing types don't even learn about most hot software
companies when they're still hot. They only even discover the company after
it's already old news or has become mainstream. If anything, this was more
true 15 years ago than it is today.

The article confuses cause and effect.

It's not that the suits can't still do a lot of damage, because they can and
they do. But they are not the driving factor behind a company's decline. They
are symptoms thereof.

------
nhashem
An amusing read, but there's been 15 years between this essay and the Social
Network, and the stereotype of hackers as socially maladjusted, unshowered
nerds hasn't changed much in 15 years (except maybe we're considered
maladjusted, unshowered, _rich_ nerds).

Will we ever get to the point where mass media realizes there we are capable
of doing things like dating an attractive woman... without even needing to
shower her with money we've scored big in our IPO?

~~~
jonnathanson
I've worked on quite a few teams of nerdy hackers, as I suspect you have and
many of us have, and let's take a look around and be honest: for the most
part, the stereotype still holds. For the most part. Are things trending, if
slowly, in the other direction? Perhaps. But we have a long, long way to go in
a galaxy far away before your average hacker is dating attractive women.

~~~
9oliYQjP
In high school, when my algebra teacher found out I was attending a semi-
formal that he was chaperoning, he said "Really? You're taking a girl? Good
for you."

I showed up and when he saw who I was with, his jaw literally dropped. I had
one of the hottest girls as my high school sweetheart. We won a "cutest
couple" award that night. We dated for 3 years.

I know a lot of hackers (of either sex) with attractive partners. It's not
hacking that's unsexy. My girlfriend encouraged me to play on the computer so
long as she got the attention she needed too. She loved it when I built her a
computer (it was completely purple in the 1990s, a rare machine). She even
played a few Quake 2 death matches online with me.

But sometimes hackers are unconfident. That's a universal turnoff. After I
dated that girl I went years without finding another girlfriend because I'd
totally lost confidence in myself. Get some confidence, and even a computer
programmer can get an attractive partner. I thought this was thoroughly
documented in The Game :-)

~~~
jonnathanson
Well, yes. It's not that hacking in and of itself is not sexy; it's that
hackers and social awkwardness tend to be fairly highly correlated. That
doesn't mean hackers, as a categorical rule, must be scrawny and squirrely and
awkward. But a lot of us are. I don't consider myself to be, nor do I fault
those who are for being that way. I just think we'd be slightly naive to
assume the myth of the nerdy hacker is no longer reflective of reality
whatsoever.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Oldie, but goodie.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842> <\- 5 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821> <\- 23 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310>

[http://searchyc.com/submissions/how+software+die?sort=by_dat...](http://searchyc.com/submissions/how+software+die?sort=by_date)

------
flatline
"You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money than they
know what to do with. But that's less than you might think."

I remember thinking this in my 20s. The novelty of making more than your
parents wears of relatively quickly though. Having a mortgage in an affluent
area pretty much blows that all to pieces. That being said, my feeling is that
being in the industry as a worker bee often does not pay equal to what you are
worth = the money you are bringing in. But isn't this true of all professions
where you work for someone else?

~~~
wuputah
Expecting to be paid what you bring in - or even remotely close (like enough
to cover overhead) - is a frequent misconception of how capitalism works. Good
companies have revenue of $1M/year per employee. Great companies have
_profits_ of $1M/year per employee. Do you think you contributed $1M to your
company's bottom line last year?

Remember that the goal of all for-profit companies is to generate profit, and
that profit is either returned to its shareholders (known as dividends) or re-
invested in the company with the hopes of raising the value of the company
(and hence the share price). You can get a piece of that pie by taking your
hard-earned money and investing in the company you work for. Some companies
even let you do this at a reduced price (stock options) or, if you're lucky,
include a stock award as part of your compensation. If you're not a
shareholder, you shouldn't expect to see any part of the profit: you haven't
taken on the risk of investing in the company. (Yes, some companies do have
profit sharing as part of their compensation, but that's typically a different
way of saying "you get a bonus if we can afford it.")

Granted, many of these concepts are non-existant when you're working for a
start-up (where generating revenue, let alone profit, is stalled for months or
even years), but the end goal is the same.

------
drawkbox
This essay is great and appears every so often like The Last Question from
Asimov. It is one that is very true to the life of a company as it matures. It
also shows why innovation will always happen at smaller companies with smaller
teams just like everything good ever invented.

------
oldpond
So is sudden colony collapse the equivalent of off-shoring? I understand
that's caused by a virus. Is that what we're calling it?

I remember back in 2006 being shocked and appalled at how a city councilor was
making more money that me. Here I am fixing the most complicated systems ever
created and some low level politician has a bigger salary than me! So I went
independent and now make substantially more than your average politician.
Problem solved.

Good thing there's a shortage of bees.

------
mweatherill
A problem that affects all software companies is how they manage their legacy.
In a startup, everything is new and you are blazing frontiers. Once
established, the legacy code just keeps growing and a bureaucracy is put in
place to manage it. Developers are leaving Google for Facebook so they can get
things done. You can then imagine where Amazon sits in this journey. Joining a
startup is like rewriting everything from scratch.

------
cancelbubble
"You're building something intricate and fine."

Odds are, you're not. Well, intricate yes, but fine, no.

~~~
pjscott
That's "fine" as in "fine motor skills", or "fine sandpaper", not as a synonym
for good.

~~~
thwarted
Yeah, but a lot of software, some of it MVP, is extremely coarse.

------
hillel
I'm sure there are many writers that I like whose views I would disagree with
if I knew them. That said, I just can't read anything this guy writes since he
so vehemently opposed gay marriage.

~~~
moshezadka
I feel the same dichotomy. What people said below is correct -- he does not
mention sexuality -- but it still tinges what he writes.

In thinking why this is, I have the following to offer: if it was "John Q.
Random on Why Software Companies Die", there is a good chance it wouldn't rise
to the top of HN quite so quickly. The accumulated reputation Card has is
actually important for people reading this article. If this is so, then we
must remember some of his reputation is being anti-gay-marriage: it is no less
important to this article as is him being the author of Ender's Game.

~~~
profgubler
You do realize that well over half the country is anti-gay marriage? So when
you read online do you discredit every two out of three articles you read
because that person is likely against gay marriage?

This is in jest but most of the time external beliefs don't matter to the
topic at hand. Such as do you discredit the work of Schindler because he was a
womanizer and from most accounts a jerk, or look negatively on others who
write about coding because when they aren't writing about coding they are out
supporting the tea party perhaps.

~~~
dasil003
Not that I disagree, but I'd be willing to bet serious ching that half of
professional writers aren't against gay marriage.

~~~
profgubler
And I would probably not take that bet, because I am sure you are right as
well.

