I think the fundamental problem is that non-technical people end up in positions of power and then feel they need to assert their decision making power or they will lose it. In fact, in my experience, it becomes an article of faith with some of them that the technical people are being short sighted in some way, and thus going with "industry standard practices" (eg: currently popular buzzwords) is superior to the "indulgent" suggestions of the technical person.
I worry that today's generation of hackers have cottoned to the need to start companies so that they can do great work, rather than being forced into mediocrity by non-technical middle "managers"... only to turn around and be hampered by non-technical investors making absurd demands. (Maybe VC meddling has declined precipitously in the last 5 years or so, I hope so.)
In my experience at many startups a few VCs mostly left us alone, but most VCs forced decisions on us that were bad decisions, often bad market decisions, but many of them bad technology decisions Just one example: "You're getting $4M in funding but you have to spend $2M of it on this other portfolio companies product that claims to do what you need." Even though that other product didn't actually do what we needed, targeted something else entirely, but the VC was not technical so he didn't understand this. It was akin to "javascript, java, whatever". This decision set us back 2 years and ultimately cut the exit return by about %90 of what it would have been (given the value of similar companies at the stage we were when we sold, even one year earlier.) Did the VC learn his lesson? Of course not, he never heard (or was willing to hear) that it was a mistake and due to liquidation preferences and other double dipping, they made out great. The employees, however, lost out.
I worry that today's generation of hackers have cottoned to the need to start companies so that they can do great work, rather than being forced into mediocrity by non-technical middle "managers"... only to turn around and be hampered by non-technical investors making absurd demands. (Maybe VC meddling has declined precipitously in the last 5 years or so, I hope so.)
In my experience at many startups a few VCs mostly left us alone, but most VCs forced decisions on us that were bad decisions, often bad market decisions, but many of them bad technology decisions Just one example: "You're getting $4M in funding but you have to spend $2M of it on this other portfolio companies product that claims to do what you need." Even though that other product didn't actually do what we needed, targeted something else entirely, but the VC was not technical so he didn't understand this. It was akin to "javascript, java, whatever". This decision set us back 2 years and ultimately cut the exit return by about %90 of what it would have been (given the value of similar companies at the stage we were when we sold, even one year earlier.) Did the VC learn his lesson? Of course not, he never heard (or was willing to hear) that it was a mistake and due to liquidation preferences and other double dipping, they made out great. The employees, however, lost out.