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Any company that can rely on an ads cash cow and a large, competent engineering team can probably afford to rewrite most of their software periodically. This wo

• yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  Like most things, it depends. There are happy mediums between rewriting absolutely everything and making the fewest possible changes. This is true and viable in organisations of any size.
• paganel 8y ago
  > team can probably afford to rewrite most of their software periodically I think Google partially does this in order to keep its engineers happy, as you are more happy when you develop something from the ground-up compared to just maintaining something already built. By going down this route those engineers are kept in a “happy state” so there’s less risk of them flying off to other pastures, where they could potentially build the next product that could “kill” Google. Sort of invisible golden hand-cuffs, if you will. I personally find it tremendously wasteful at a societal level but I can see the value of this strategy for Google as a company.