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In the software industry, the average engineer, designer, project manager or product manager stays with the same company for about three years.
This short longevity creates cycles that you can observe if you remain in the same job for at least four or five years. I tend to be loyal to the companies I work for, and my average time in an organization is much longer than the average. That is, I have seen a lot of people coming and going and many cycles go around in a full loop.
Any software that was written more than three years ago is regarded as “legacy stuff,” built by people who are no longer around. When a body of work was created by individuals that nobody remembers, a funny thing happens. That work is automatically considered flawed in some way. At that point, people no longer remember or understand the original vision, the product grew away from it, nobody feels ownership or attachment to it, and a strong desire to throw it away and rebuild it grows slowly but incessantly. ...