The last paragraph in this story rings true to me.

I used to work at a company that wasn’t in the software development or tech industry, but wanted to start working on a new software development project. They were willing to put a bunch of money into patents, registering a new company, etc for this. They were unwilling to hire serious experience and expertise—in other words they exclusively hired interns.

I kept advocating to bring just 1 experienced developer to help mentor the rest of the team. But they kept ignoring my advice. They continued spending a bunch of money to make the project that was being worked on look amazing to other people. They didn’t do anything to provide an environment to ensure the project was actually good.

Long story short, I left and from what I can tell the project is not in a healthy state. They have reached the sunk cost fallacy as it has been years since the project was started. There was massive shortsightedness and the person leading the project is one of those “know-it-all” types who doesn’t know jack about software development.

They focus on short term costs and in the long run it costed them more—and not just financially.