alt Hacker News> without the human factor
Less and less humans will be needed to support these businesses.
> There is a reason no (successful) company ever said "we finished the app, now fire all the engineers and collect money forever."
1) software is very easy to get duplicated and commoditized. So the margins get tighter and tighter and companies with "finished software" will have less and less money to be collected. Big companies need constant reinvention not because customers need improvements, but to keep their lines going up in the chart.
Remember Skype before being bought by Microsoft? It was as close as I can imagine from being "finished". It could be run forever with a skeleton crew and they could be collecting a few millions of dollars forever for their service. Do you think that MS paid 7 BILLION USD because of the "finished" software?
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> software is very easy to get duplicated and commoditized.
Software engineers are not required to copy files around. They are hired to figure out what is the best way to deliver the features envisioned by product managers, and how to keep things working.
> So the margins get tighter and tighter and companies with "finished software" will have less and less money to be collected.
There is no such thing as finished software. At best you decide to stop maintaining it.
I’d say a business requiring ever fewer humans would, due to competition and similar dynamics, become a kind of commodity business producing ever reducing margins.