As others have documented, software fundamentally undermines the concept of tacit institutional knowledge which undergirds the capitalist enterprise. In order to avoid the market optimizing away their profits, companies must obfuscate their internal concepts, drawing rent from their reliance on an ever-shrinking command-and-operations structure (“Gervais principle”!) But software serves as clear technical documentation, and it tends to build upon itself, drawing out more and more of the business’ principles and operational knowledge into an interchangeable difficult-to-monopolize grey goo which is good for job-hoppers.
The good part: software tends to corrode business structure down to its capital bones, eating away at administrative jobs.
The bad part: like in Animal Farm, the software engineer can become swept up in the cult of profit,
As others have documented, software fundamentally undermines the concept of tacit institutional knowledge which undergirds the capitalist enterprise. In order to avoid the market optimizing away their profits, companies must obfuscate their internal concepts, drawing rent from their reliance on an ever-shrinking command-and-operations structure (“Gervais principle”!) But software serves as clear technical documentation, and it tends to build upon itself, drawing out more and more of the business’ principles and operational knowledge into an interchangeable difficult-to-monopolize grey goo which is good for job-hoppers.
The good part: software tends to corrode business structure down to its capital bones, eating away at administrative jobs.
The bad part: like in Animal Farm, the software engineer can become swept up in the cult of profit,