Software Development as a Creative Endeavor
I remember this being passed around at least a decade ago. It’s remarkable how right it is. It’s attributed to Orson Scott Card (the author of Ender’s Game), but I can’t find a canonical source to substantiate that:
Here’s the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can’t exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they’re not looking, you can carry off the honey…
Here’s the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself…
[The coder] suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports…
The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they’re surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate.
The full text is here.
