I totally disagree. These things are not obvious. I thought it was a great post.
My friends have asked me why dropbox and youtube haven't added any new features in years.
The business people that I work with do not see and do not understand the subtleties of software. If I tell them adding a map in one part of the software will take 10 minutes, and 10 weeks to add to another part, they don't understand why. When I explain it, they understand why, even if they don't like it.
There needs to be a lot more "this is why software development behaves the way it does".
It's obvious that you can't see the 90% of the iceberg under water when you are well versed in the ways of wayward icebergs. Many people, even smart/experienced people, aren't - or they don't get it in their gut and it has to be re-re-re-explained periodically.
I've recently come across an odd reverse scenario. I had done the standard 5 year financial projection for a business plan, but "only" had about 200 engineers in year 5. Now, leaving aside any pivots that occur, that's a lot of engineers. But as a percentage of projected revenue, it wasn't very many. And the investor had yet another objection: compared to the staffs at Facebook and DropBox (for example), it's tiny.
This article helped us (me) be able to point out that none of these 'hidden' things that the article talks about are things that we have to deal with. So, we don't need as many engineers. He 'got it', just from me being able to use this article this evening to riff against.
