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That will never work because economic returns to a piece of code will not go to the engineer. Both management and company owners will want most of the returns

That will never work because economic returns to a piece of code will not go to the engineer. Both management and company owners will want most of the returns of the code, leaving no profit motive for the engineer to be ultimately responsible for it. The engineer will move on and the owners and management are stuck with rotting code. Or management gets rid of all the engineers because they want to keep all the revenue and discount both cost of maintenance and need for engineers to profit.

hliyan 11y ago
I believe you described Marx's theory of alienation[1] as applied to software engineering. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
- codeonfire 11y ago
  Yeah, which is why companies should stop going on about 'owning' things. If I'm going to own its creation and operation, I'm going to own all the revenue it produces. All of it. I have all the means of production (no 19th century power looms needed to create software) and all I really have to do is survive while it is being produced.
  - omouse 11y ago
    This is actually what Philip Greenspun did at ArsDigita. Each project had its manager/lead own the profit-and-loss: From Founders At Work: "I'm organizing this company like McDonald's. Each restaurant is going to be managed by a few people, and they're going to have profit-and-loss responsibility. If they make a profit, they get to pocket half of it. If they make a loss, we're going to know who's responsible, and we're going to go there and fix it, and there are going to be consequences for those people." People have all the right incentives to make their customer happy, to do the thing on time, to take the customer's money, deposit in the bank, and then move on to the next one and get their bonus at the end of the year. And apparently at one time Accenture had this philosophy too: At the time Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) didn't have any salespeople. They always had the people who were executing the project sell it. "You eat what you kill" was the phrase at Accenture. You don't have a salesperson go out and tell the customer, "We can do this", making promises and then handing it off to a programmer"

hliyan 11y ago

I believe you described Marx's theory of alienation[1] as applied to software engineering. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation

codeonfire 11y ago
Yeah, which is why companies should stop going on about 'owning' things. If I'm going to own its creation and operation, I'm going to own all the revenue it produces. All of it. I have all the means of production (no 19th century power looms needed to create software) and all I really have to do is survive while it is being produced.
- omouse 11y ago
  This is actually what Philip Greenspun did at ArsDigita. Each project had its manager/lead own the profit-and-loss: From Founders At Work: "I'm organizing this company like McDonald's. Each restaurant is going to be managed by a few people, and they're going to have profit-and-loss responsibility. If they make a profit, they get to pocket half of it. If they make a loss, we're going to know who's responsible, and we're going to go there and fix it, and there are going to be consequences for those people." People have all the right incentives to make their customer happy, to do the thing on time, to take the customer's money, deposit in the bank, and then move on to the next one and get their bonus at the end of the year. And apparently at one time Accenture had this philosophy too: At the time Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) didn't have any salespeople. They always had the people who were executing the project sell it. "You eat what you kill" was the phrase at Accenture. You don't have a salesperson go out and tell the customer, "We can do this", making promises and then handing it off to a programmer"