Forum OpenACS Q&A: OFF-TOPIC (long): But still very interesting.

Sorry about the off-topic, but we're not having many posts today so I thought I'd contribute with this a friend just sent me. I can't verify if the author is really OSC, but nonetheless it sounds awfully true (and even familiar).

Software - How Software Companies Die
        By 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 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 Linux. 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 the 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 someonedemands 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.