True story. Similar start. A couple of enterprise customers, kludgy old code. Changeability was the problem. Decision made for total rewrite. Budget no probs, t

True story. Similar start. A couple of enterprise customers, kludgy old code. Changeability was the problem. Decision made for total rewrite. Budget no probs, team of 10 allocated. I was the guy who sold the deals. Wanted to assess if we had a disaster on our hands. Asked CTO to explain how team was constructed. Here is how the conversation went: Me: tell me about the team CTO: well it is actually all being built by two guys. Me: That's crazy. We have a 10 person team. CTO: Actually I lied, it is actually all being built by one guy. Before you get me fired, let me explain. One guy just builds prototypes to keep all those idiotic requests from management. Me: I knew the guy. Fastest damn developer on the planet CTO: we just throw his code away. The other guy who we don't let you meet actually writes the code that works. You see nothing for weeks, then it emerges and works beautifully. Me: what do you do with the other 8 guys? CTO: give them make work to keep them out of the way. The system was a market success for a long time.