I agree with the author that slow can be good and that taste and diligence can trump raw smarts.
I think what is often missed though is the opportunity cost of shipping bad products. Our industry lionizes fast delivery to juice short term earnings but this is very often at tremendous long term cost. When your revenue depends on shoddy products, you must devote an excess of resources to patching the holes that are slowly sinking your ship. The best people will tire of this and jump aboard the next vessel that offers better working conditions and/or higher compensation. But of course one never escapes the fundamental problems by job hopping.
To build something great, reliable and high value takes time. If it were easy, the market would be awash with cheap high quality products. It clearly isn't.
For things to improve, I believe that a small group of workers will likely need to join together and sacrifice short term earnings to build viable long term companies on a different set of ethics and values. I have personally made this sacrifice and am working on something I think is great and valuable that I could not possibly do within a typical company.
I have optimism that soon alternative approaches to building companies will emerge outside of the current VC funding model, which I believe has run its course. There are many, many software developers who are wealthy enough to sacrifice short term compensation to build more equitable companies with longer term vision and with a much higher ownership percentage that will pay off in the long run.
I think what is often missed though is the opportunity cost of shipping bad products. Our industry lionizes fast delivery to juice short term earnings but this is very often at tremendous long term cost. When your revenue depends on shoddy products, you must devote an excess of resources to patching the holes that are slowly sinking your ship. The best people will tire of this and jump aboard the next vessel that offers better working conditions and/or higher compensation. But of course one never escapes the fundamental problems by job hopping.
To build something great, reliable and high value takes time. If it were easy, the market would be awash with cheap high quality products. It clearly isn't.
For things to improve, I believe that a small group of workers will likely need to join together and sacrifice short term earnings to build viable long term companies on a different set of ethics and values. I have personally made this sacrifice and am working on something I think is great and valuable that I could not possibly do within a typical company.
I have optimism that soon alternative approaches to building companies will emerge outside of the current VC funding model, which I believe has run its course. There are many, many software developers who are wealthy enough to sacrifice short term compensation to build more equitable companies with longer term vision and with a much higher ownership percentage that will pay off in the long run.