[Ologn]

By the late 1960s, software projects had finally reached a certain size, and the particularities of managing these large projects were discussed at NATO software engineering conferences, and codified by Fred Brooks in 1975 in the Mythical Man Month. The upshot being, software projects at corporations can't be run in the same manner as non-software projects. Yet at Fortune 500 companies today, and in the past two years that includes at least some of the FAANGs, you see them trying to run software projects and treating programmers in the same manner they treat non-programmers, and it doesn't work.

I just happened to watch some old talk or interview with Gabe Newell recently, and he said industry thinking at the time Valve was founded was of a certain kind, and Valve took the opposite approach from the industry - the industry was looking to get cheaper programmers, and Valve went the other way and looked for the most expensive programmers, and so forth. Valve has probably less than 400 people working there (don't know the 2025 headcount), but makes billions a year in profit.