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by tptacek 83 days ago
At the end of the day, the shareholders care about delivering features, gaining customers, and making money. They don’t care how software is built.

They absolutely do care how software is built. They just don't weight the factors the same way you do.

Product companies exist to convert software into money by providing utility to users. There's really no part of the transaction that meaningfully involves how much fun you're personally having building it.
2 comments
ki4kf 83 days ago
"There's really no part of the transaction that meaningfully involves how much fun you're personally having building it."

Funny. Steve Jobs was all about fun. Seems to have worked out well given Apple has maintained much of the culture Steve left behind.

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akerl_ 83 days ago
> Steve Jobs was all about fun

By every account I’ve seen, Steve Jobs cared that the users of the product were having fun. He did not care at all how much fun the people building the product had.

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ki4kf 83 days ago
It's well documented that people enjoyed working at Apple under Steve - pain and pleasure come together when working on stuff that's insanely great.

If your idea of fun is doing no work then you're delusional.

Now that we're here, it should also be noted Steve did not make decisions based on 'maximizing shareholder wealth'.

Rather doing the right things on the top line (creating great products and telling people about them), the bottom line would follow.

Thats the difference between a visionary CEO and a bozo-CEO (enter Zuckerberg, Nadella et al).

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akerl_ 83 days ago
I think you may be caught in the distortion field.
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slopinthebag 83 days ago
Well they also care to a certain extent because how something is built has a direct impact on the output as well.
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tptacek 83 days ago
They care about outcomes. I don't know that you're going to be able to draw an especially compelling line to programmer excitement and fulfillment and any of those outcome factors, though.
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slopinthebag 83 days ago
I'm agreeing with the other person that they do care about how it's built, not that they care about how much fun the programmers are having...
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