This seems to happen when software companies start to be run by people who have never written code. (I'm sure the observation generalizes to other forms of eng

This seems to happen when software companies start to be run by people who have never written code. (I'm sure the observation generalizes to other forms of engineering, but software is what I'm familiar with.) They tend to perceive the work through a very shallow lens. They see that time is spent and code is produced, and they think that that's the essence of the process. What they don't see is all the knowledge that goes into building systems that work well; they have none of that knowledge themselves, and so it's invisible to them. They don't know the difference between a well-written program and a badly-written one, so it's easy for them to think they're getting the same results for less money by outsourcing.