alt Hacker NewsI think you miss the point, but using your foodie reference: would you rather go to a couple of Michelin restaurants -- where each piece brings a reflection of the chef, the geographic area, and what quality ingredients were available on that day -- or would you rather only eat at McDonald's for an experience that is extremely consistent across days, seasons, and continents?
Now imagine a chef who has a nice little restaurant but is now being sent a couple of "quality assurance" guys from McDonald's who tell him that his choice of potato variety for chips does not exactly conform to the "standards" defined at the mothership.
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The one day, your chef leaves, the food goes to shit and productivity/output/morale drops. When the new chef arrives, then everyone has to relearn everything.
Software shouldn't be bespoke and "artisan".
The hidden implication in your extension of the foodie analogy is that consistent food must have worse quality.
That's not true, and if anything in software having consistent software delivery makes it more likely to achieve Michelin-graded level of quality, not less.
A chef in a michelin restaurant, unless he/she is the sole employee (very rare) is likely in charge of a team of line cooks and while they may get some time and place to experiment you better believe it will not be when preparing the chefs carefully curated menu and recipes for paying customers who have been on a reservation waitlist for months. Bob decided to cook the broccoli with a blowtorch and substituted some ingredients in table 9s dinner. There is a fire in the kitchen and the NYT food critic is going into anaphylactic shock but Bob at least feels like an artist so we will let it slide.