[wongarsu]

> a brave new world of software development that is just ahead of us -- small teams, phenomenal productivity

It's also the brave new world that lies behind us. Doom, one of the most influential computer games due to technical innovation, was created by a team of 3 programmers (and 8 non-programmers).

Small teams of brilliant people can produce phenonemal results. Unfortunately in big companies a manager is not only measured by his results, but also by his budget and the number of people under him. The division of 100 people simply looks more impressive than the room of 10. So you end up hiring lots of (at best) mediocre programmers, pay them as little as possible, and use big architectures and processes designed to cope with idiots (Enterprise architectures and Enterprise processes, as we call them).

[mr_overalls]

Calling anyone who isn't brilliant an idiot is a bit. . . uncharitable. Most of us here, myself included, (and probably you) are not rockstar/ninja programmers.