There's also the issue of exposure industry cred. I mean, we're talking about GitHub here, one of the hottest websites amongst developers. Working on it comes w

There's also the issue of exposure industry cred. I mean, we're talking about GitHub here, one of the hottest websites amongst developers. Working on it comes with a certain amount of prestige and every feature they add results in a massive amount of industry press on sites like HN. Of course engineers working there are going to be extremely driven and motivated, it's a very rewarding product to work on. Now imagine you took the engineering team of GitHub (or one like it) and transplanted them to work on Widget Inc.'s CRM system that's primarily used by their sales, marketing and HR people. Instead of your end users being similarly savvy and motivated developers they're now your typical corporate office staff. They're not using your product by choice but only because it's what the corporate higher-ups handed to them. They couldn't care less about new whiz-bang features you add to the product, they're mostly concerned about getting their TPS report out on time. Interface changes only confuse them and slow them down. They're never going to tweet or post a blog post about how awesome the new thing you just rolled out is. Do you think the engineers would be similarly motivated to work on such a product? I doubt it.