The dominance of horizontal companies like Microsoft and categories like system of record is really telling. Slide 6. Salesforce and SAP are notable by their absence here but they would be for example the SoR par excellence. Theyre also kind of crappy, but so sprawly that they are exceptionally hard to dislodge. (I think there should be a word for software that dominates a market by virtue of having a little bit of everything and being complex enough that its too daunting to replace.)

For the worker bees on HN, I also note the authors' admiration for companies that have both positive business outlook and shitty work like balance (slide 32). Generally the tenor of this deck is that SaaS is burning money and is not going to sustain at this rate and therefore needs to get a grip on comp and productivity. I dont know that I agree with the conclusion but I can certainly see that if SaaS business, which by definition has a reliable income stream, is spending more than is coming in, that is a problem. But it's more a failing of the CFO and management team than it is of the lowly Software Developer II drone, no?