I’m reminded of a saying by Andrew Carnegie : “Take away my people and leave the factories, and soon there will be grass growing on the factory floors, but take away my factories and leave my people, and soon we will have bigger and better factories.”
Code is expendable; developers aren’t
Finally, companies should evaluate their software investments for what they are: short-term assets. The intellectual property value of any one version of a custom Web application is minimal. Far more valuable are the developers who built it, because they’re the ones who will be asked to rewrite it in response to the ever-changing business and technology landscapes.
Google and Microsoft, among others, understand the value of hiring, retaining, and incentivizing good developers, and they do it well. It’s a shame that so many companies promote their best programming brains into needless middle-management positions or allow them to leave the field entirely, rather than retaining them for their value as developers.
via Lessons from a lost decade: Developing for a disposable Web