My grandma had a story about the devil's son's eye. The boy had such pretty eyes, that the devil couldn't help but caress constantly, while saying "my son got s

My grandma had a story about the devil's son's eye. The boy had such pretty eyes, that the devil couldn't help but caress constantly, while saying "my son got such good eyes!". Until, one day, the devil pierces one of them. By accident, while fondling it. I think that story illustrates why software gets worse: it's less about the company caring too little about it, and more about caring too much. It sees its software becoming popular, liked, and the people in that company (I don't think it's just the PM, but everyone) feel the urge to "do" something. Make it better, bigger, more functional, oh look we should add the kitchen sink too, but not we need to rip apart the old floor because it is not waterproof, "it'll be fine". >Maybe we ought to start promoting PMs who are willing to stand pat for an occasional release or three. Maybe we ought to fire all the consumer-product PMs. Maybe we ought to start including realistic customer-retraining-cost estimates in our product planning process. Or maybe software companies should ask more input from users before, when, and after they make changes on how the software works. Bad software changes can be rolled back, unlike the devil's son's eye.