7 ms·

How Software Companies Die - by Orson Scott Card

140 points by wh-uws 16y ago

hillel 16y ago
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.
- astrodust 16y ago
  He's also vehemently opposed to good writing if any of his more recent books are any example. I have honestly seen better fan fiction.
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    That's unfortunate if true. His older books are really good.
    - a_m_kelly 16y ago
      It's true: the old ones are very good, the recent additions to the Ender series for instance are terrible, they're an obvious cash in on his brand, I suspect he writes them quickly so he can make some quick cash (or to fill up his existing publishing contract.) and spends the rest of the time on stuff that doesn't suck so hard. A review I read of his recent story collection said his recent stories didn't have to try so hard, he knew they'd get published and he was more or less keeping a hand in, his earlier work he's working hard and striving for quality, this applies in spades to the rest of his recent work and may well apply to any entity's (sometime) fall-off in effort or innovation after they've succeeded.
      - chc 16y ago
        I agree that Card's writing is not what it used to be, but I don't think he's crassly cashing in on his past success. I think he has simply lost his touch (or at least, he no longer has the touch that appealed to us). His early works were written when he was still relatively young and passionate and had years' worth of crazy ideas swirling around in his head. Fast forward 25 years, he's written all the good ideas he originally had, and he's now a middle-aged Mormon father and conservative political activist. If you read his books nowadays, you'll find they're pretty much what you'd expect from that description.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Honestly - get over yourself. You don't have to pay him money, and he doesn't even mention sexuality in that article ('cept, if you really, really want to stretch it, he does mention underwear) Yeah some of his believes are wrong, but this isn't one of them.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    +1. If we only listened to people whose views aligned perfectly with our own, just imagine what a mess the world would be.
    - chadgeidel 16y ago
      I would argue that has already happened (here in the US). Of course, then again, I'm cranky.
- bryanlarsen 16y ago
  The sad thing is that I really enjoy his books. His newer books aren't as good. Is that because they really aren't as good, or because my reading of them is tinged by my knowledge that the guy is a nutcase?
  - WingForward 16y ago
    They're really not that good. While his personal beliefs are way way more conservative than his novels, he does keep a pretty good separation. He really hasn't written anything that good since the late 90s. The Red v Blue wars in America? Weird. The latter Enderverse novels could have been cranked out by current AI. Treasure Box? Enchantment? Snoozers.
    - chc 16y ago
      You can actually see the progression in the original Ender quartet, since it spanned pretty much his entire career as a good writer. "Ender's Game" in '85 and "Speaker for the Dead" in '86 — It's hard to decide which one was more awesome. They're very different, but both are really gripping and create two fascinating worlds. When I read those two books, I thought I had found my favorite author of all time. "Xenocide" in '91 — Sadly, not as good as the first two, but still a pretty compelling book. Veers a little too close to becoming a paean to the wonders of marriage and fatherhood, but constantly course-corrects and is pretty successful overall. "Children of the Mind" in '96 — It's a readable novel, but as the conclusion to the previous three books, I couldn't help but ask, "WTF?" It's way too involved in its own ideas to bother with compelling characterization, and it has this weird tunnel vision that essentially reduces all human interaction to marriage, divorce or some analogue for the two.
  - Zak 16y ago
    I read most of the books in the Ender's game series a few years ago, only having read the original before. There was a significant decline in quality in the later books, coinciding with more propaganda.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    I really enjoy "The West Wing". Not fond of some of the politics and I regard Martin Sheen as a serious nutcase, but I still like the show. If you don't take the art on it's own terms then you will have to avoid a lot of stuff in this life.
- moshezadka 16y ago
  I feel the same dichotomy. What people said below is correct -- he does not mention sexuality -- but it still tinges what he writes. In thinking why this is, I have the following to offer: if it was "John Q. Random on Why Software Companies Die", there is a good chance it wouldn't rise to the top of HN quite so quickly. The accumulated reputation Card has is actually important for people reading this article. If this is so, then we must remember some of his reputation is being anti-gay-marriage: it is no less important to this article as is him being the author of Ender's Game.
  - KeithMajhor 16y ago
    Except that being the author of Enders game speaks to his ability as a writer. His views on gay marriage are completely irrelevant in this context.
  - profgubler 16y ago
    You do realize that well over half the country is anti-gay marriage? So when you read online do you discredit every two out of three articles you read because that person is likely against gay marriage? This is in jest but most of the time external beliefs don't matter to the topic at hand. Such as do you discredit the work of Schindler because he was a womanizer and from most accounts a jerk, or look negatively on others who write about coding because when they aren't writing about coding they are out supporting the tea party perhaps.
    - dasil003 16y ago
      Not that I disagree, but I'd be willing to bet serious ching that half of professional writers aren't against gay marriage.
      - profgubler 16y ago
        And I would probably not take that bet, because I am sure you are right as well.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
- cubicle67 16y ago
  This seems to be an American behaviour I don't really understand; the inability to separate the things someone's said/written, from the person. If someone writes something you disagree with, why does that invalidate everything else they say? Michael Moore seems to exemplify this perfectly. He holds strong opinions on a wide variety of (often orthogonal) topics, yet Americans seem to feel the need to either embrace everything he says as good, or be vehemently opposed to him on the basis of their disagreeing with him on one topic. Is it too hard to say "I agree on this" and "I disagree on that"?
drawkbox 16y ago
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.
jonnathanson 16y ago
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: 1) The company has grown complacent; 2) The company has lost touch with its userbase, or with the landscape in general, or with the competition; 3) The company has reached its liquidity event, at which point it's no longer "cool," and cannot attract or retain top talent; 4) A bad investor, founder, or partner took control and started making poor decisions, or a great one ceded control and left; 5) The category is disrupted entirely. 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.
- mweatherill 16y ago
  I would love to read more articles about how mature companies are reinvigorated and revived. It is easy to point the finger at what went wrong and why companies often aren't sustainable but what about the counter-examples that we can really learn from?
  - jonnathanson 16y ago
    True. Or companies that came back from the total brink (Apple, most famously, but also IBM, to some extent HP, and others). What's interesting to me is that you rarely hear about software companies that come back from near-irrelevance after a prolonged bout with it. I'm sure there are some obvious examples I'm not thinking of right now. In some respects you could almost even make the argument for Microsoft, assuming its E&D business continues to flourish and become more important to the company overall.
- Figs 16y ago
  It may be cliché now, but was it cliché in 1995 (when it appears it was written)?
  - jonnathanson 16y ago
cancelbubble 16y ago
"You're building something intricate and fine." Odds are, you're not. Well, intricate yes, but fine, no.
- pjscott 16y ago
  That's "fine" as in "fine motor skills", or "fine sandpaper", not as a synonym for good.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    Yeah, but a lot of software, some of it MVP, is extremely coarse.
flatline 16y ago
"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." 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?
- wuputah 16y ago
  Expecting to be paid what you bring in - or even remotely close (like enough to cover overhead) - is a frequent misconception of how capitalism works. Good companies have revenue of $1M/year per employee. Great companies have _profits_ of $1M/year per employee. Do you think you contributed $1M to your company's bottom line last year? Remember that the goal of all for-profit companies is to generate profit, and that profit is either returned to its shareholders (known as dividends) or re-invested in the company with the hopes of raising the value of the company (and hence the share price). You can get a piece of that pie by taking your hard-earned money and investing in the company you work for. Some companies even let you do this at a reduced price (stock options) or, if you're lucky, include a stock award as part of your compensation. If you're not a shareholder, you shouldn't expect to see any part of the profit: you haven't taken on the risk of investing in the company. (Yes, some companies do have profit sharing as part of their compensation, but that's typically a different way of saying "you get a bonus if we can afford it.") Granted, many of these concepts are non-existant when you're working for a start-up (where generating revenue, let alone profit, is stalled for months or even years), but the end goal is the same.
- chc 16y ago
  It's true by definition unless that someone else is a sucker.
nhashem 16y ago
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, rich nerds). 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?
- jonnathanson 16y ago
  I've worked on quite a few teams of nerdy hackers, as I suspect you have and many of us have, and let's take a look around and be honest: for the most part, the stereotype still holds. For the most part. Are things trending, if slowly, in the other direction? Perhaps. But we have a long, long way to go in a galaxy far away before your average hacker is dating attractive women.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    I don't believe nerds are becoming any less stereotypical, I just believe more and more people are becoming nerdy. As more generations are born, technology becomes more ingrained. I'm in my 20's, we grew up with technology. I was navigating DOS at 4. My wife remembers using Amigas. I don't have to ask anyone my age if they know how to use '...' because they do, it's innate. You give your average 50 year old a new piece of technology and they're lost. Simply take video games. The amount of people who play are now astounding. I know girls that play CoD, who WoW, who're making levels on LBP, who were excited when SC2 came out. For my generation I expect a lot of nerds will be dating attractive female nerds.
    - jonnathanson 16y ago
      True, but we must keep in mind that the definition of "nerdy" isn't static either. Nerds operate at the fringes (we can call them bleeding edges if we're feeling self-generous!) of interests and culture. MMORPGs may no longer be the exclusive domain of nerds these days, but there are other things to fill the void. The revival of old-school hardware hacking and homebrew hobbyism, for example. Or hard sci-fi. Or the latest and greatest tech in general (and obviously I don't mean mainstream tech). Nerds are also defined by a sort of intense interest level in their given fields. (Not coincidentally, Asperger's follows a similar diagnostic consideration set). A non-nerd may play Civ5, but will a non-nerd ever mod Civ5? Will a non-nerd ever intentionally hack the AI to improve the realism of diplomacy in Civ5, or to script out realistic reenactments of the Cold War? I did those things, and I really doubt a "normal" would have done them. I'm sure you have similar passions, projects, quirks, hobbies, interests, etc. -- that unique combination of traits that will always set you apart as a nerd. Yes, in theory, these days it's a lot more socially acceptable for you to wear that nerdery as a badge of honor. But that's theory, and then there's praxis. I find that most non-nerds pay lip service to nerd-chic, but they won't actually walk the walk. I really doubt a non-nerd will ever entertain a conversation with me about artificial intelligence or string theory.
mweatherill 16y ago
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.
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Oldie, but goodie. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842 <- 5 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821 <- 23 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310 http://searchyc.com/submissions/how+software+die?sort=by_date http://searchyc.com/submissions/how+software+die?sort=by_dat...
oldpond 16y ago
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? 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. Good thing there's a shortage of bees.

140 points by wh-uws 16y ago

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.

astrodust 16y ago
He's also vehemently opposed to good writing if any of his more recent books are any example. I have honestly seen better fan fiction.
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  That's unfortunate if true. His older books are really good.
  - a_m_kelly 16y ago
    It's true: the old ones are very good, the recent additions to the Ender series for instance are terrible, they're an obvious cash in on his brand, I suspect he writes them quickly so he can make some quick cash (or to fill up his existing publishing contract.) and spends the rest of the time on stuff that doesn't suck so hard. A review I read of his recent story collection said his recent stories didn't have to try so hard, he knew they'd get published and he was more or less keeping a hand in, his earlier work he's working hard and striving for quality, this applies in spades to the rest of his recent work and may well apply to any entity's (sometime) fall-off in effort or innovation after they've succeeded.
    - chc 16y ago
      I agree that Card's writing is not what it used to be, but I don't think he's crassly cashing in on his past success. I think he has simply lost his touch (or at least, he no longer has the touch that appealed to us). His early works were written when he was still relatively young and passionate and had years' worth of crazy ideas swirling around in his head. Fast forward 25 years, he's written all the good ideas he originally had, and he's now a middle-aged Mormon father and conservative political activist. If you read his books nowadays, you'll find they're pretty much what you'd expect from that description.
tomjen3 16y ago
Honestly - get over yourself. You don't have to pay him money, and he doesn't even mention sexuality in that article ('cept, if you really, really want to stretch it, he does mention underwear) Yeah some of his believes are wrong, but this isn't one of them.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  +1. If we only listened to people whose views aligned perfectly with our own, just imagine what a mess the world would be.
  - chadgeidel 16y ago
    I would argue that has already happened (here in the US). Of course, then again, I'm cranky.
bryanlarsen 16y ago
The sad thing is that I really enjoy his books. His newer books aren't as good. Is that because they really aren't as good, or because my reading of them is tinged by my knowledge that the guy is a nutcase?
- WingForward 16y ago
  They're really not that good. While his personal beliefs are way way more conservative than his novels, he does keep a pretty good separation. He really hasn't written anything that good since the late 90s. The Red v Blue wars in America? Weird. The latter Enderverse novels could have been cranked out by current AI. Treasure Box? Enchantment? Snoozers.
  - chc 16y ago
    You can actually see the progression in the original Ender quartet, since it spanned pretty much his entire career as a good writer. "Ender's Game" in '85 and "Speaker for the Dead" in '86 — It's hard to decide which one was more awesome. They're very different, but both are really gripping and create two fascinating worlds. When I read those two books, I thought I had found my favorite author of all time. "Xenocide" in '91 — Sadly, not as good as the first two, but still a pretty compelling book. Veers a little too close to becoming a paean to the wonders of marriage and fatherhood, but constantly course-corrects and is pretty successful overall. "Children of the Mind" in '96 — It's a readable novel, but as the conclusion to the previous three books, I couldn't help but ask, "WTF?" It's way too involved in its own ideas to bother with compelling characterization, and it has this weird tunnel vision that essentially reduces all human interaction to marriage, divorce or some analogue for the two.
- Zak 16y ago
  I read most of the books in the Ender's game series a few years ago, only having read the original before. There was a significant decline in quality in the later books, coinciding with more propaganda.
- protomyth 16y ago
  I really enjoy "The West Wing". Not fond of some of the politics and I regard Martin Sheen as a serious nutcase, but I still like the show. If you don't take the art on it's own terms then you will have to avoid a lot of stuff in this life.
moshezadka 16y ago
I feel the same dichotomy. What people said below is correct -- he does not mention sexuality -- but it still tinges what he writes. In thinking why this is, I have the following to offer: if it was "John Q. Random on Why Software Companies Die", there is a good chance it wouldn't rise to the top of HN quite so quickly. The accumulated reputation Card has is actually important for people reading this article. If this is so, then we must remember some of his reputation is being anti-gay-marriage: it is no less important to this article as is him being the author of Ender's Game.
- KeithMajhor 16y ago
  Except that being the author of Enders game speaks to his ability as a writer. His views on gay marriage are completely irrelevant in this context.
- profgubler 16y ago
  You do realize that well over half the country is anti-gay marriage? So when you read online do you discredit every two out of three articles you read because that person is likely against gay marriage? This is in jest but most of the time external beliefs don't matter to the topic at hand. Such as do you discredit the work of Schindler because he was a womanizer and from most accounts a jerk, or look negatively on others who write about coding because when they aren't writing about coding they are out supporting the tea party perhaps.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    Not that I disagree, but I'd be willing to bet serious ching that half of professional writers aren't against gay marriage.
    - profgubler 16y ago
      And I would probably not take that bet, because I am sure you are right as well.
- rbanffy 16y ago
cubicle67 16y ago
This seems to be an American behaviour I don't really understand; the inability to separate the things someone's said/written, from the person. If someone writes something you disagree with, why does that invalidate everything else they say? Michael Moore seems to exemplify this perfectly. He holds strong opinions on a wide variety of (often orthogonal) topics, yet Americans seem to feel the need to either embrace everything he says as good, or be vehemently opposed to him on the basis of their disagreeing with him on one topic. Is it too hard to say "I agree on this" and "I disagree on that"?

drawkbox 16y ago

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.

jonnathanson 16y ago

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

mweatherill 16y ago
I would love to read more articles about how mature companies are reinvigorated and revived. It is easy to point the finger at what went wrong and why companies often aren't sustainable but what about the counter-examples that we can really learn from?
- jonnathanson 16y ago
  True. Or companies that came back from the total brink (Apple, most famously, but also IBM, to some extent HP, and others). What's interesting to me is that you rarely hear about software companies that come back from near-irrelevance after a prolonged bout with it. I'm sure there are some obvious examples I'm not thinking of right now. In some respects you could almost even make the argument for Microsoft, assuming its E&D business continues to flourish and become more important to the company overall.
Figs 16y ago
It may be cliché now, but was it cliché in 1995 (when it appears it was written)?
- jonnathanson 16y ago

cancelbubble 16y ago

"You're building something intricate and fine." Odds are, you're not. Well, intricate yes, but fine, no.

pjscott 16y ago
That's "fine" as in "fine motor skills", or "fine sandpaper", not as a synonym for good.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Yeah, but a lot of software, some of it MVP, is extremely coarse.

flatline 16y ago

"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." 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?

wuputah 16y ago
Expecting to be paid what you bring in - or even remotely close (like enough to cover overhead) - is a frequent misconception of how capitalism works. Good companies have revenue of $1M/year per employee. Great companies have _profits_ of $1M/year per employee. Do you think you contributed $1M to your company's bottom line last year? Remember that the goal of all for-profit companies is to generate profit, and that profit is either returned to its shareholders (known as dividends) or re-invested in the company with the hopes of raising the value of the company (and hence the share price). You can get a piece of that pie by taking your hard-earned money and investing in the company you work for. Some companies even let you do this at a reduced price (stock options) or, if you're lucky, include a stock award as part of your compensation. If you're not a shareholder, you shouldn't expect to see any part of the profit: you haven't taken on the risk of investing in the company. (Yes, some companies do have profit sharing as part of their compensation, but that's typically a different way of saying "you get a bonus if we can afford it.") Granted, many of these concepts are non-existant when you're working for a start-up (where generating revenue, let alone profit, is stalled for months or even years), but the end goal is the same.
chc 16y ago
It's true by definition unless that someone else is a sucker.

nhashem 16y ago

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, rich nerds). 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?

jonnathanson 16y ago
I've worked on quite a few teams of nerdy hackers, as I suspect you have and many of us have, and let's take a look around and be honest: for the most part, the stereotype still holds. For the most part. Are things trending, if slowly, in the other direction? Perhaps. But we have a long, long way to go in a galaxy far away before your average hacker is dating attractive women.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  I don't believe nerds are becoming any less stereotypical, I just believe more and more people are becoming nerdy. As more generations are born, technology becomes more ingrained. I'm in my 20's, we grew up with technology. I was navigating DOS at 4. My wife remembers using Amigas. I don't have to ask anyone my age if they know how to use '...' because they do, it's innate. You give your average 50 year old a new piece of technology and they're lost. Simply take video games. The amount of people who play are now astounding. I know girls that play CoD, who WoW, who're making levels on LBP, who were excited when SC2 came out. For my generation I expect a lot of nerds will be dating attractive female nerds.
  - jonnathanson 16y ago
    True, but we must keep in mind that the definition of "nerdy" isn't static either. Nerds operate at the fringes (we can call them bleeding edges if we're feeling self-generous!) of interests and culture. MMORPGs may no longer be the exclusive domain of nerds these days, but there are other things to fill the void. The revival of old-school hardware hacking and homebrew hobbyism, for example. Or hard sci-fi. Or the latest and greatest tech in general (and obviously I don't mean mainstream tech). Nerds are also defined by a sort of intense interest level in their given fields. (Not coincidentally, Asperger's follows a similar diagnostic consideration set). A non-nerd may play Civ5, but will a non-nerd ever mod Civ5? Will a non-nerd ever intentionally hack the AI to improve the realism of diplomacy in Civ5, or to script out realistic reenactments of the Cold War? I did those things, and I really doubt a "normal" would have done them. I'm sure you have similar passions, projects, quirks, hobbies, interests, etc. -- that unique combination of traits that will always set you apart as a nerd. Yes, in theory, these days it's a lot more socially acceptable for you to wear that nerdery as a badge of honor. But that's theory, and then there's praxis. I find that most non-nerds pay lip service to nerd-chic, but they won't actually walk the walk. I really doubt a non-nerd will ever entertain a conversation with me about artificial intelligence or string theory.

mweatherill 16y ago

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.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Oldie, but goodie. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43842 <- 5 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552821 <- 23 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635094 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637968 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654310 http://searchyc.com/submissions/how+software+die?sort=by_date http://searchyc.com/submissions/how+software+die?sort=by_dat...

oldpond 16y ago

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? 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. Good thing there's a shortage of bees.