The little dirty secret of the tech industry is that if you put yourself in the right time at the right place and get the strategic advantage you can make so mu

The little dirty secret of the tech industry is that if you put yourself in the right time at the right place and get the strategic advantage you can make so much money that a lot of mistakes can be hidden. Warren Buffet says that when the tide goes low you can see who is swimming naked. The opposite is true, when the tide is high you cannot see who is swimming naked, so one should not make too much assumptions about their clothes. In the late 90's everyone thought that microsoft had found the perfect way to manage programmers and run a software company. All kinds of companies would try to emulate microsoft methods. But in reality, that clever fox Gates guided Microsoft into the perfect strategic position. Once microsoft had to compete in fields that were outside their monopoly the results were not as dominating. Similarly Amazon is in a great strategic position nowadays, because they have built out the infrastructure that the US uses to shop online. Their stock is flying high, so everyone assumes they must be doing something right. And they undoubtedly are. But that does not necessarily mean that their practices of managing programmers are optimal or even good. In fact if you look at Amazon's finances you are stricken at how little profit they make. It is unclear why, because their financial statements are very opaque. But it is entirely possible that they are hemorrhaging money because of the way the hire and fire programmers but the whole thing is hidden by their strategic position. It is not like a company that does software development better can come in and beat Amazon at selling things on the internet.