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:<p>1) The company has grown complacent;<p>2) The company has lost touch with its userbase, or with the landscape in general, or with the competition;<p>3) The company has reached its liquidity event, at which point it's no longer "cool," and cannot attract or retain top talent;<p>4) A bad investor, founder, or partner took control and started making poor decisions, <i>or</i> a great one ceded control and left;<p>5) The category is disrupted entirely.<p>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.
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, <i>rich</i> nerds).<p>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?
"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."<p>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?
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.
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?<p>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.<p>Good thing there's a shortage of bees.
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.
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.