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Date:      Fri, 6 Oct 2017 00:25:17 -0400
From:      Alejandro Imass <aimass@yabarana.com>
To:        Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: [OT] Why did "enterprise" crap seem to win? (re: Virtualization,  Java, Microsoft, Outsourcing, etc.)...
Message-ID:  <CAHieY7T%2Bcm6SETonW2Q0xTdODzyxjTFHm=Kz4aZw7sENcBWOCw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20171005062919.88a3db9c.freebsd@edvax.de>
References:  <CAHieY7RLYQZU0enKe9OF0Ruw2A7vRi59rkoBpvGf2aLngkFw_g@mail.gmail.com> <20171005062919.88a3db9c.freebsd@edvax.de>

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On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 12:29 AM, Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> wrote:
> Allow me a few comments. It will be mostly statements from my
> very limited individual point of view and experience.
>
>
> On Wed, 4 Oct 2017 10:10:04 -0400, Alejandro Imass wrote:
>> Why did C++ and Java seem win over C and shared object libraries?
>
> Java is the new COBOL, 'nuff said.
>

[...]

>
> The reason is simple: Good work doesn't pay.
>

Seems that now I have a lot of work to comb through this thread and
pick out the gems in all the great feedback, but this one in
particular struck a very strong chord with me.

This email from which I'm writing is from a moribund company which I
founded around 10 years ago in which we developed some amazing
technology for a few companies, some of which went on to be pretty
successful, although our humble little company failed in the end.

The fundamental reason we failed is because nobody was really willing
to pay for great work. Our business model was flawed from the start
because we gave our customers a lot more than they were paying us, and
the competition would deliver mediocre crap (at best)  for more money,
and our customers didn't really care either way.

They never really understood our passion and elegance, and in
retrospect, I get it now. How could they really "get it"? For example
when I would talk passionately about FreeBSD and mod_perl and 6,000
concurrent requests per server, the answer was like "well what do you
think about WSO2, I heard some XYZ company from Wall Street uses
that"... shouldn't we be moving towards that architecture?" Honestly,
what can you answer to that? where do you even begin to explain? I
mean, what part of 6K request per node didn't you get?

We were the underdogs, selling something that nobody really wanted to
buy: great work.

In the end customers don't really care about good technology or
elegant systems. All they care about is eye candy and buzz words. So I
finally gave in, and sold what was left of our team to one of our
customers that did really well, and we continue to do the best work we
possibly can, but sadly limited within the realm of "enterprise"
system development, and out of all things in f-cking Java. In my
particular case, it's a means to an end to eventually move on to my
next little startup, because I surely don't want to spend the rest of
my time on this planet with this enterprise bullshit.

Warmest regards to all! And a heartfelt thank you for confirming that
I am not the only one frustrated about all this.


-- 
Alex



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