I have some corp experience (I've laughed in the face of a Motorola IT VP) but mostly I stay up all night programming and have since I was little. I've been crying, "this company is screwed! This company is screwed!". That's true in a narrow sense -- they've lost the ability to hire and work with hackers. I was dubious but I started because a well known porter was there and because other people I respected gave it high marks. Things changed and those people left.
The hacker type got us into this mess -- too heavy interdependant code, too few tests, lots of patches and a constant stream of new features. Not because the hacker type can't write good code, just because they're less good at throwing authority around and demanding things be done one way -- they think they're doing management a favor giving them what they want in quick turnaround with no investment in architecture. High paid Java programmers wouldn't have let this develop. But now that it has, they aren't going to salvage it. It's a rewrite. That's the implications of the culture change. They want to be all serious and grown up and micromanage, then they need to work with professionals whose job satisfaction expectations and pay rates are calibrated to that. They're past the point of working closely to find a clever way out if it. They're going by the book now.
This is my prediction.
-scott
