> Hah, clearly business success isn't a function of code quality
Mind you, early Facebook wasn’t exactly a “tech business”—the code wasn’t making them any money, such that having a bug in the code would make them less money.
Really, Facebook only became a “tech business” once they got into 1. Messaging, and 2. Advertising. Then they had SLAs, and breaking those SLAs meant losing users/customers; and their ability to deliver on those SLAs became directly related to the quality of their code.
I work as a programmer in the games industry and I’ve noticed that frequently as well. Commercially successful games aren’t always a strong indicator of code quality and often it tends to be that the bad code “luckily didn’t matter” in cases of success.
Business success isn't a function of technical/artistic quality in any field. There's a loose correlation sure, but there are hundreds or thousands of examples where poorly written/made books, TV shows, music, films, games etc also did really well commercially as well as the opposite. Many would say something like Firefly is better than something like Twilight, but one made millions of dollars and the other got cancelled in two seasons.
Knowing what to make and who to market it to will usually matter a lot more than how you build it.
The other way to look at this is to say "Hah, clearly business success isn't a function of code quality"