“Some sphincter in a suit.”

“Some sphincter in a suit.”  How software companies die, a brilliant piece from 1995 by that I've never seen before.  It's by, of all people, science fiction author Orson Scott Card.  It's absolutely spot on.  His conclusion:

The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played golf with some sphincter in a suit. 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.

Got to get some better packaging. Yeah, that's it.

Awesome.