> Imagine if Facebook adopted this strategy, and thus, never hired the extremely smart engineers responsible for things like Hack, or their optimized PHP runtime.
I don't think Facebook's success depends on their optimized PHP runtime. I'd imagine most of the cost savings disappear when you factor in the engineers that are needed to build and maintain the system. I also don't know the comparative effectiveness of hiring brilliant engineers versus brilliant salespeople versus just hiring average folk all round. Hey, maybe I'm wrong. But it certainly doesn't feel like an absolutely obvious kind of thing, the kind of thing on which to base a theory of how to build and not build a tech company.
Business efficiency is not generally a controversial goal -- although what counts as 'waste' is.
The only time people seem to argue against efficiency (generally via false dichotomy, see 'hardware is cheap, programmers are expensive') is in a blank-check environment where nobody is holding these decision-makers to account for self-serving inefficiencies.
But hardware expenses are predictable. X load means Y outlay. Investments in better software through more or better programmers is uncertain – just look at how even experienced devs continually underestimate the time it takes to implement any given feature.
I don't think Facebook's success depends on their optimized PHP runtime. I'd imagine most of the cost savings disappear when you factor in the engineers that are needed to build and maintain the system. I also don't know the comparative effectiveness of hiring brilliant engineers versus brilliant salespeople versus just hiring average folk all round. Hey, maybe I'm wrong. But it certainly doesn't feel like an absolutely obvious kind of thing, the kind of thing on which to base a theory of how to build and not build a tech company.