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Comment by psv1 | Hacker News Reader

On a somehow related note: Am I alone in thinking that sometimes a lot of software development feels almost like a giant pyramid scheme with multiple steps in between? You build software for companies that build software and provide services to companies that build software for companies that...

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Only if you ignore the value that is generated in-between layers. Aside from software development tools and technologies, everyone below is generating actual value to the market (even if it utilizes technology to do so).

Pyramid schemes are primarily focused on value flowing upwards, whereas in your example the value is flowing downwards and outwards.

I'm not being snarky or argumentative - I genuinely don't understand what you're saying. What's below/upwards/downwards, what's the value between layers?

I think he is trying to argue, that every company in between these "layers" produces some kind of value. Which is why other companies are willing to buy from them in the first place.

Every industry has and always will have "snake oil" sellers, but the meaningful companies in 99% of the case produce real value to their customers.

I pay for a bunch of services but if you add them all up then you get less than the cost of two engineers. As good as my engineers are, I don't believe that two engineers could produce the same amount of value for the company in the same time-frame (including all the maintenance).

There are times where we opt for google sheets rather than pay for a service but we never build anything ourselves if there is something we can buy / rent out there.

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