_xivi

> I have tried several times to get Node.js into the military on approved software lists for internal development and its a huge struggle

What's on the approved stack? I imagine .Net and Java/spring are the standard, right? anything else like php, python, go etc?

> I bet they could have 2 interns porting the thing to Google App Engine and then migrate the database

How can you possibly have this assessment without looking at the code/infra?

There are many things that affect cost beyond the visible features. The project isn't in a vacuum. It's interlocked with their other services infrastructure.

You can judge Google however you want, but they're not stupid or amateurs. These types of announcements immensely damages their image and affect their customers, if they could avoid it easily as you imagine, why would they not?

They've built the service and run it for many years for billions of people. A more realistic guess would be that for whatever reason, the price is higher than what's visible on the surface and they're not willing to pay it.

I think you're on the same page here. They might not have expressed it clearly but it's about pivoting and adapting to the market.

I'm also reminded of Mike Tyson's quote: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face".

Things rarely go as planned, so you should favor following leads and taking advantage of opportunities, instead of sticking rigorously to some plan you put together when you were less experienced.

Unless there's evidence the original plan is still viable, oftentimes, being attached to it and ignoring what's the market is telling you is just your ego speaking.

> Feature factories are a thing for a reason.

If anything that goes against the parent comment, how Apple has more revenue per engineer while not being a feature factory by any stretch

In any case, taking both of the comments combined kinda prove my point, that higher revenue can be attributed to many things completely outside how many products/features was shipped:

- Pricing strategy

- You can have a monopoly with a single shitty product

- You can be middle man/broker with no product to begin with

- You can be running a Ponzi scheme or committing fraud

So it doesn't make sense to use revenue (or revenue per team member) as a way to compare teams between different companies and furthermore possibly across completely separate markets and industry

What does revenue got to do with producing/shipping products? maybe you quoted the wrong sentence?

You can have millions of dollars in revenue without producing anything, on the other hand, you can also provide a lot of services and products for free

> from this obviously bad take

This is like saying your evaluation of my property, back when it was in bad shape was wrong... because after renovating the entire thing and fixing its issues, I got a different price.

From the linked article:

> Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In principle, yes

So, of course if you manage to change the input, you'll get a different output.

Today's Microsoft (WSL, Edge, Bing, Azure, VSCode, copilot, etc) is so different from 2007 you wouldn't even recognize it as the same company. Just like what Paul Graham has said they needed to change if they were to survive.