I worked at an ISP in the late 90's which was bought up, together with several other small ISPs. Before the acquisition it was a bunch of techies working their asses off. After, dozens of non-technical staff came on board who all got huge paychecks and a BMW, bossed the techies around in clueless Outlook 98 fullquote e-mails but contributed zero to the bottom line.

The money, in our case, came from a large north-european telco with deep pockets. They turned a blind eye to the burn rate for almost 2 years before pulling the plug.

I've heard of a German tech company hiring a philosopher, you know, just for fun. On a superficial level, this might seem comparable to Google hiring Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum and tytso. In reality however these folks not only boost Google's reputation among developers, they innovate and make a technical contribution to the company. That precisely is the difference between 90's dotcoms' thrift-spending habits and how companies work today. The article misses that completely.