> There is severe survivor bias at play. Massive profitability allows you to get away with just about anything. ... For every Valve and Github, there is a Microsoft or an Oracle.
That's a very interesting point, because Microsoft used to be the darling of the business press.
In the 1990s, we saw all sorts of business books about Microsoft, which was held up as the example to follow for the digital economy. People even found praise for Microsoft's tendency to have multiple teams working on competing products. Better to have the competition inside the company, they said, so that the best product could face external competitors.
This was just cargo-cult management. Just because Microsoft did it that way doesn't mean that it results in success. Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft was successful despite those characteristics.
We humans are very good at rationalizing things, after the fact. We can come up with a reason for things that are actually random and uncorrelated with success.
That's a very interesting point, because Microsoft used to be the darling of the business press.
In the 1990s, we saw all sorts of business books about Microsoft, which was held up as the example to follow for the digital economy. People even found praise for Microsoft's tendency to have multiple teams working on competing products. Better to have the competition inside the company, they said, so that the best product could face external competitors.
This was just cargo-cult management. Just because Microsoft did it that way doesn't mean that it results in success. Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft was successful despite those characteristics.
We humans are very good at rationalizing things, after the fact. We can come up with a reason for things that are actually random and uncorrelated with success.