原创 软件公司是怎样消亡的

最近看到一篇文章，感觉挺有意思的。

不过可能国内的程序员很少能达到文中描述的那种境界，所以国内的软件公司也不会这样die掉。

Software
- How Software Companies Die

By
Orson Scott Card

The environment that
nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types -
and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body
and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you
emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred
pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first
grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it
must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program
runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won. You're
aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're not
players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with
DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They
barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the
opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine.
They'll never understand it.

BEEKEEPING

Here's the secret that
every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate
programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly
communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and
when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. 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. You see, all
these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in their heads
saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All you
have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in their
heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average,
this is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them
other coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is
another programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them;
evenly matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you
want to get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one
certified genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he
glances at other people's code only long enough to sneer at it. He's
a Player, thinks the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is
enough. If a software company provides such a hive, the coders will
give up sleep, love, health, and clean laundry, while the company
keeps the bulk of the money.

OUT OF CONTROL

Here's the problem that
ends up killing company after company. All successful software
companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured
programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he
cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him
out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself. One way or
another, marketers get control. But...control of what? Instead of
finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly discover
that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable,
uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who
resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress
them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the
product. Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you
with every word they say.

SMOKED OUT

The shock is greater for
the coder, though. He suddenly finds that alien creatures control his
life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And now someone demands that he
PLAN all his programming and then stick to the plan, never improving,
never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's code. The
lousy young programmer who once worshiped him is now his tyrannical
boss, a position he got because he played golf with some sphincter in
a suit. The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the
marketers, comfortable now because they're surrounded by power
neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each
new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats
and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better packaging. Yeah,
that's it.