> Imagine you have a company that goes slower and slower every quarter, and then you confront the shareholders with the statement, that the way to solve it, is

> Imagine you have a company that goes slower and slower every quarter, and then you confront the shareholders with the statement, that the way to solve it, is to do absolutely no new features for a quarter or two, refactor the code, learn new methodologies etc. I doubt that the shareholders would allow that > now there are 9 programmers Companies on the stock market don't have "9 programmers". They have a lot of teams of 9 programmers. So while it's true that it would probably completely be impossible for a stock market company to completely freeze for a quarter or two, individual teams can still do that. If the factorio team grows to tens of programmers (it probably won't and probably shouldn't), I would be very surprised if they find the need - and if they manage to - freeze all teams together for a big refactoring round. I am also unsure that it would be the right approach. That observation holds wether they go public or stay private.