Have MBAs ruined the software industry?
The conventional wisdom is that any headline in the form of a question can be answered with a “no.” I'm not so sure about this one.
Think of the most important software in the world: Linux, Google, Facebook, JavaScript, PGP, even the World Wide Web itself. How many of these projects began in conference rooms, their success assured by the work of middle managers in business-casual attire obsessing over metrics, OKRs, and feature lists? Linux was a university project, but it now powers much of the world. Google began in a garage. Facebook was launched in a dorm room. JavaScript, PGP, and the Web were experiments with no obvious payoff, whose impact could not have been predicted. Sure, Google and Facebook are now steaming piles of shit, but who ruined them? Who made the decisions that destroyed these paragons of technological achievement? Was it the former chess team captains, crafting software they were proud of, drinking Mountain Dew and watching episodes of Cowboy Bebop between merges? I don't think so.
“But wait,” I hear you saying, “Alphabet and Meta make tons of money!” Sure, they do, but it won't last. Even with their monopolistic power, or perhaps because of it, Facebook and Google Search are worsening every day, and their parent companies are just begging to “disrupted” out of business. Besides, at what cost are they earning their money? Is the destruction of society not a sufficiently meaningful externality? Phillip Morris makes tons of money, too. They just have to kill millions of unwilling addicts in the process. As harmful as they are now, and as flawed as they were from the beginning, Facebook and Google were better off before “engagement” and “monetization” were ends unto themselves.
Building software is nothing like building furniture, building cars, or even building aircraft. To build those things it to repeat projects that have been completed thousands or even millions of times before. Software, on the other hand, is always bespoke. It's always unique. It's always being created for the first time. After all, if someone needed a software application that already existed, they would just obtain a copy. As someone once wrote, “Software development is one of the only professions where we are asked to accurately state how long it will take us to do something that has never been done before in the history of the universe.”
There is a profound difference between people who get this and people who don't. Spend enough time in a corporate feature factory, and you'll see it firsthand: your boss needs to know when the feature will be done, and they need to know now! Mountains of technical debt slow teams to a halt because management can just “hire someone to fix it later.” Moreover, good work doesn't matter; looking good (to management) is everything.
Working in the software industry for fifteen years has felt, at times, like watching outsiders and know-nothings slowly infect and destroy the craft I love, all so that they could ruin the software that gave them their jobs with poor decisions and short-sightedness. It's like watching a bully force a talented artist to set their painting aside so that they can instead sell Bored Ape stickers. No love. No care. No foresight. Just a quick buck.
Does all of this sound too harsh? Read Craig Cook's blog post on his decision to leave the software industry, where he bemoans “Silicon Valley MBA pricks” and says that “the whole tech industry is nothing but scumbag billionaires and smarmy marketing and unbridled enshittification and oppressive management and AI psychosis and alpha-bro startup-hustle grind-culture bullshit.” I worked with Craig at Mozilla, and I admire him, but even I didn't realize he could be so brutally honest! I mean, some of that might be going to far, but I agree with the general sentiment. I guess you can say what you really think when your paycheck isn't on the line.
Am I suggesting we let software developers run the show? No, not quite. If it were up to me, I'd probably still be refactoring some software I wrote ten years ago. Others would chase new, shiny objects—new JavaScript frameworks, to be sure—until their companies ran out of money. Software developers sometimes need their passion to be pointed in the right direction. That guidance, however, needs to come from respectable people with real wisdom and experience to draw from, not just professional fast-talkers who, as one colleague put it, “have 'KPI' tattooed inside their eyelids.”
I've worked with some incredible people who had degrees in business administration, but I'm sorry to say it's been the exception rather than the rule. Most management types don't get it, and when they don't get it, they really don't get it. For that reason, I've decided I'll never again work as a software developer for someone who has not been a software developer themselves—for more than five minutes—and a good one, at that! Does that limit my opportunities? It sure does. It excludes all the people who think intense pressure gets cognitive work done faster. It excludes all the people who ruined Google and Facebook and Amazon. It excludes all the people who are making money off of software they didn't create, that their entire approach to software would likely never create.
That's fine with me.