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> Counter-argument: A positively staggering amount of decisionmaking at a company consists of "look at what other, successful companies are doing and mimic them". It's cargo cult management by the very definition: they see the other people doing the correct incantations and bounty fall upon them. Clearly, we just need to utter those same incantations and we'll have the success they did.

They never do.

I recall talking to someone who was very very happy to brag that his company was doing "everything just like Google" and following the exact same practices he read the company did on various engineering blogs.

I asked him what was the compensation like and how he managed to get kids from Stanford to work at his company instead of their startups and he just gave me a blank stare. Said something about how they were not in Silicon Valley and paid median salaries and that he had "no trouble finding Google caliber talent in the local market." and that "it's not really the local market's customs to give stocks to coders".

I think someone ended up buying the whole thing. Not the company but the office furniture they left after going broke.