[jokethrowaway]

I thought the same when they fired a bunch of people at my old employer (and 98% of the developers left).

Well, they just outsourced everything to cheap devs in India and things kept rolling. No new features and some new bugs, but most things work.

Turns out you don't really need that much to keep lights on.

[Lutger]

That is true. But you'll:

a) slowly lose to competitors as you can't keep up with increased demands in the space. b) take on more and more existential risks

For a lot of companies, that is exactly what they want to do. Its called the exploit phase, I forgot what business lingo this came from. Do a practical feature freeze, cut costs to the max, and squeeze all the value out the product for as long as it lives. Informally known as enshittification. Its all about cost-cutting rather than market capture.

You can last a while though, especially because there aren't many changes so there's also less operational risk.

[lokar]

This is the Broadcom business model

[Zigurd]

It's hilarious that Broadcom bought what was left of Computer Associates. It's like they needed to absorb that PE-with-a-tech-fig-leaf vibe.