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If the underlings know their product is intended to be trashed, do you really think they will suffer through the late evenings and weekends of gruelling overtime to patch ugly bugs in production?

I don't.

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I think programmers in general have an overly optimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works. "The great thing about software," they say, "as opposed to buildings or hammers, is that you can write code once and use it forever," as they ignore the dozens of applications and libraries which did nearly the same thing as the code they are writing.

> I think programmers in general have an overly optimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works.

I think programmers in general have an overly pessimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works. They write temporary, ugly hacks for the sake of expediency, and then 10, 20 years later the whole world is still suffering because of those "temporary" hacks.

Very good point. It was a very good lesson for many, that the company you work for is not your company, but theirs.

Most companies always talk about "us" and "our company". But once it gets sold, it will be very clear that it's not "us".

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