Yes. I've seen it first hand in other industry. (some) Lawyers are always willing to litigate since this is their job. They dont care if you will win or lose,

Yes. I've seen it first hand in other industry. (some) Lawyers are always willing to litigate since this is their job. They dont care if you will win or lose, they just want your money. Obviously the "good lawyer" should advice you when not to litigate, but since cases take years, managers switch jobs (exactly as described in the article) and some bullshit excuses can be made - nobody really checked their success ratio. In fact, is there a study in effectiveness of those lawsuits? They probably earned some money due to chilling factor, but was it higher than cost of litigation? Probably yes as well, but the author barely even touches this subject. The situation is often even more pervasive in IT projects - where I have seen multiple cases of consultants paid by the hour, what translated to zero incentive to actually ever finish anything. They wont kill the golden goose that lays them golden eggs. If I didnt know the decision makers (who have MBAs - so supposedly not random people), I would suspect collusion - getting kickbacks from the consultants to keep them on (who probably spend their days doing side projects for other customers). But no, it was sheer incompetence. There are lots of people who dont care if their job makes sense or not - they will litigate/write code/do whatever as long as you pay them. They are supposed to advise you when their services are not needed, but then it might mean that they lose jobs / money, so they dont have any incentives for that. Sadly I guess the theme of this submission is that "hacker news is stupid", so if anyone points out a flaw in the article, they will get downvoted to oblivion. Because the author is much smarter than us and obviously their article is flawless. Also companies dont waste millions on fruitless projects /s Most companies dont even make any retrospectives into their projects, probably because so many fail.