[laserlight]

> the money still flows if you do a bad job so why do better?

I'll raise. The money flows because you do a bad job. Doing a good job is costly and takes time. The money cannot invest that much time and resources. Investing time and resources builds an ordinary business. The money is in for the casino effect, for the bangs. Pull the arm and see if it sticks. If yes, good. Keep pulling the arm. If not, continue with another slot machine.

[Quarrelsome]

I would argue that the money is short termism though. It just assumes short term returns are the correct choice because it lacks the technical understanding of the long term benefits of a good job.

In my experience many acquisitions set the peak of a given software product. The money then makes the argument that its "good enough" and flogs the horse until its dead and a younger more agile team of developers eventually build a new product that makes it irrelevant. The only explanation I have for why so many applications fail to adapt is because of a cultural issue between the software and the money, that always gets resolved by the money winning.

For example I would suggest that the vast majority of desktop apps, especially those made by SMEs, originally in MFC or something fail to make the transition to online services that they need today because of this conflict. The company ends up dying and the money never works out what it did wrong because its much harder to appreciate those long term effects than the short term ones that gave them more money at the start.