It happens to a lot of successful products over time, but it's not inevitable by any means. It's possible to make software that is viable long term. But, there

It happens to a lot of successful products over time, but it's not inevitable by any means. It's possible to make software that is viable long term. But, there are many ugly realities regarding the current state of Corporate America that encourages this cycle. For example, the fact that most engineers need to job hop in order to get promotions and raises. That makes it nearly impossible to build up long term institutional knowledge at any one company. Another example: everyone in a publicly held company, from the rank and file programmers to the CEO, are rewarded for short term sales at the expense of long term stability. We had a thread here not too long ago[0] about how being a "maintenance engineer" was career suicide. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224188