"The software industry has always been like this, (it's something they take geeks aside to tell them in school..." I rather think it's the MBAs who get taken aside in B school. I suspect by that point though, they already know the story and have bought into it. Geeks, by definition, are more interested in the coolness of the technology than bean counting and release deadlines. I doubt it was thr programmers at CL who wanted to build Poser 5 on the aging and still buggy Poser foundation. Apple has been on the rebound since the got rid of the business savvy Pepsi man and brought back geeky Steve Jobs. In reality of course, you need both business acumen and technical talent. Sometimes, a company can have both and still fail under adverse circumstances. As for being at the bottom of the food chain, we're all down here with the folks who invested their life savings in Enron and the cops who roasted in Ford's (nothing wrong with them) Crown Vics. Unfortunately, too many people have trouble drawing the fine line between capitalist impulse and greed.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken