
The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free - mendelk
https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/
======
sevensor
(2009)

The contrarian view is that the company really had outgrown the individuals
who left. A large organization needs a bureaucracy to function more than it
needs any one person. The point of the article seems to be that the new
policies were a wake-up call, and the best policy is to avoid sending wake-up
calls so as not to spook the folks who've been around since the start. But it
doesn't work like that. If not the free pop, something else will signal that
the frontier has closed. Your smartest people aren't stupid. They'll see the
bureaucracy for what it is and decide whether it's something they want to be a
part of.

~~~
Piskvorrr
I don't think this is actually a _contrarian_ view: "magic is fading, and the
Elves _cannot_ live in a non-magical, mechanical world; thus they leave for
the West." This is inevitable: a company can wither, transform, or try to set
up a protected reservation for those of the previous Age; what it shouldn't do
is pretend that it's not happening.

