Or be a bona fide 'script kiddy', learnt some WordPress PHP or whatever and got a job as 'webmaster' or something straight out of school (UK-sense, I specifically mean no university), no formal CS/software eng. training, never properly an intern/junior trained by people who know what they're doing.
I'm sure it happens. And then you get the next job with 5y PHP experience or whatever, employer doesn't mind no formal training (not that I'm saying they should in general - but if they're non-technical hiring someone to 'do it', or first hire to build the team or whatever, then they probably should as a reasonable proxy!), rinse and repeat.
If such a team of 3 people comprised of script kiddies and 5y PHP coders are going to create a $20m/year product, you can be sure that they will take precedence over anyone who was 'properly' educated in cs when it comes to hiring.
> I'm sure it happens
Yeah it does happen. While using the Internet, quite frequently, you are looking at such products developed by such teams, making millions of dollars a year. Even as the good engineering that is being done at FAANG is now being questioned over profitability, with even Google talking about 'inefficiency'.
The shitty software probably isn't the product. It could be some sales/inventory management tool or whatever, that before they got some 'script kiddies' in was just some forms in Microsoft Access (is that what it's called.. the forms on top of database tool we had to learn in ICT at school) orwwhatever.
I think many people here are reacting to $20M forgetting not everything's a SaaS/in the business of selling software (but mostly still has some (in-house) software somewhere).
The shitty software is what sells the product, from the description. Even if the shitty software is a sales/inventory management tool or 'whatever', from the description it is obvious that it is vital to whatever business they are doing.
It doesn't matter whether it was built with Microsoft Access and Excel files. If its contributing a major part of that $20m /year, its not shitty, its golden.
Anyone who understands the trials of modern business, including any tech lead who had to deal with even merely stakeholders and low-level business decisions would prefer to have a $20 m/year sh*t before a well-crafted, 'properly built' architecture. The difficult thing is getting to that $20 m/year. The difficulty of rearchitecting or maintaining things pale in comparison to that.
> I think many people here are reacting to $20M forgetting not everything's a SaaS/in the business of selling software (but mostly still has some (in-house) software somewhere).
Everyone is aware of that. Many are also aware that getting to $20m/year in WHATEVER form is more difficult than architecting a 'great' stack & infra.
Well, I don't agree. You'd struggle to do it without any software at all these days, but you can certainly do it without anything written in-house.
My point about Access (or Excel or whatever as you say) was that that would be the very early days of something starting to happen in-house, that wouldn't even be the hypothetical 'script kiddies'.