Re: Microsoft admits 30% of code not written by humans

On Thu, 1 May 2025 18:49:40 -0400, Paul wrote:

We had people like that at my work. Given jobs that did not contribute a
lot. No opportunity to look like stars. They still had jobs though. But
it's rather thin ice to be standing on, and there were few opportunities
to move in the company, to a star-maker position. This is just the
nature of the industry.

IBM was the ur-Corporation built on this model. A labyrinthine
bureaucracy, built around inflexible, unwieldy procedures -- even its
products reflected that philosophy. All except one particular product
family we all know about. But that deviation from corporate tradition was
seen as a “mistake” that the company vowed never to repeat.

The company has been on the decline since the 1990s (that famous “mistake”
being a major contributory factor, of course). Red Hat, on the other hand,
was a startup which has fostered several people who would fit your phrase
of “looking like stars”. IBM has acquired Red Hat, and it is probably now
the only profitable division the company has. It will remain so as long as
IBM top management keep their hands-off approach to their subsidiary,
letting it continue to operate as an independent business. Because as soon
as they infect it with their usual corporate culture, they will kill it.