Why bad software architecture is easy to monetize

> In housing, usually stories like these are not possible, because there is a minimal - legal or other - standard that housing needs to comply to.

“My sweet summer child”

Housing has a lot of regulation, and also a lot of dirty tricks to cut corners without the buyer having recourse (and it’s usually minor enough problem thatvit’s not worth fightig), and building in specific ways so the owner comes back to the same contractor with a high probability.

I remember once a contractor explaining “we’re the only shop in the region that can use this super fancy system”, and it’s really a way to declare clients will come bck to them when it breaks

In reality, housing works exactly like he described, just over a longer time frame. Human housing didn't start with water and electricity and insulation. That came much later. It started as just very bare bones shelter from the elements.

The Great Fire of London occured in part because thatched roofs and other cheap solutions common at the time turned out unexpectedly to be a fire hazard in a dense city environment, something that hadn't really existed before. Afterwards, the UK banned thatched roofs from city limits. It's still legal to have them on farm houses in rural locations because thatched roofs aren't evil incarnate. They work fine at a small scale.

The developed world we have today wouldn't exist if humans had to start with modern, highly regulated housing standards. In fact, it's a hardship for some and fueling homelessness that we have largely eliminated many "lesser" forms of housing in the US.

In business, same thing. You may not even need the fully developed thing with all the bells and whistles. You may be in a position where the cheap, half-assed solution now is absolutely perfect and allows you to grow your business where you both can need and afford the extras.

I'm reminded of an article title: "I'm going to scale my foot up your butt!" Scaling problems are good problems to have. It's a sign of success. But worrying about scaling when you should be writing an MVP is putting the cart before the horse.

In anything, whether housing or software, the real trick is accurately determining which cheap, half-assed solutions are good steps and which are "oh, god, no!" Cheap housing that's small and bare bones isn't necessarily a problem. Cheap housing that's, say, a health hazard may not be worth it. You may be better off sleeping in a tent. There's no doubt software equivalents to those metrics.

What about the fact that money paid later is always cheaper than the money paid today?

What about being a rational actor and actually asking what are you going to get from the contractors who are requesting 200000 upfront? Surely their contract would have more detail the cheaper one lacks.

without reading TFA i can tell you. because the software architecture is irrelevant to monetizing a product. a great architecture is also “easy” to monetize.

if you look past 0->1 then the better arch starts to pay off.

Tl;dr version of the answer:

There are 3 ways a job can be done: fast, cheap, good. You can pick only 2.