> In the same breath he wants people who LOVE their jobs and super-productivity, but yet also understand its only a job. Yeah, it's a sentiment that I'm not su

> In the same breath he wants people who LOVE their jobs and super-productivity, but yet also understand its only a job. Yeah, it's a sentiment that I'm not sure was meant to be taken literally rather than rhetorically. Consider who the essay is written towards -- ISVs in 2004. What about an ISV requires super-productivity? In fact, the author states this literally: > It's okay to be in awe of these great hackers. But as a practical matter, small ISVs would be much better off hiring professionals. For what it's worth, it's fascinating to look at this essay with 2020 lenses on. I have two observations: 1) The traditional ISV, while not dead, has at a lot of its traditional role usurped & cannibalized by players higher up the value chain. This somewhat relates to my next point. 2) The rise of growth and data science roles as a fusion of marketing and technology along with the enormous growth of tech as a whole (hard tech and soft tech) means that archetypical average social media literate hacker founder archetype of today is quite interested and capable of interacting with users today. And of the three "sins" the essay points out, that's probably the most cardinal one -- for the vast majority of businesses, if you have high enough margins and an employee who's good enough at growth to add double digits to your bottom-line, are you going to whinge about their predilection to fuss about interesting projects and tools? No, you're going to raise a ton of cheap VC and let them go to town.