How Software Companies Die
  - Orson Scott Card
 
 The environment that nurtures 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 the 
 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 fathers' 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 really want to get a good swarm, 
 you make sure 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 else 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 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 
 improvising, never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's 
 code.  The lousy young programmer who once worshipped 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 ties 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 packaging.  Yeah, that's it.
 
 -------
 Orson Scott Card is the Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author of Ender's 
 Game, Speaker for the Dead, Lost Boys, the Alvin Maker series, and many 
 other novels.
 
 
 
 
 

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

---

Back to home page...