All three symptoms are bad. They really are a bad thing for business. That being said:
Software development exists to make tools. That's it. It's not an end, in and of itself - you're a tool maker.
There are very successful businesses that operate using poor tools. They may not be run as well as they should be, but good results can, and often do, come from bad tools. Also remember, though, that eliminating your three symptoms will likely make the company even more effective, especially in the long term.
High dev turnover is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is bad management. If those businesses prosper, it's usually in the short term and usually precedes a buyout, a merger, or an outright failure. I've seen it happen over and over.
All those 3 things are not good let me focus on turnover. I'm seeing it happen right now. management/company are being cheap so they don't care much about the team, techonology or process, just the bottomline. So in turn (eventually) team members don't care about the project, just THEIR bottomline. After several months, they decide it's not worth the stress and move on. We are a small team of 6 developers, this year 3 people want out and it's just July. 2 people came in, one more is coming. Seems all we're doing is transition and project turnover. Team does not mature and is ineffective. our customer senses this, and instead of giving the team more projects (more money for company) they limit it to certains apps. I wonder when management will realize that being cheap is costly!
If I may take a Devil's Advocate view on this for a moment:
Some people like a challenge. Achieving extremely difficult things are very exciting for some people and there are some developers that enjoy finding those uber hard problems and work on those. Having something difficult to do appeals to some people.
The turnover means that each time someone is starting from scratch rather than retaining all the ideas and thoughts that the previous developer had in building out the software, whatever it was intended to do. Sometimes multiple heads can make a good thing. After all, how many people developed Windows 7? ;)
The poorly built point is where someone may think, "Oh, I can shine here by fixing some of this stuff," and at times it can work for a while. Ka-ching!
The lack of a roadmap and almost advocating the "Cowboy coding" style may appeal to those that want great autonomy and just move to their own beat. After all, who needs methodologies and best practices when one has supernatural powers to use to make this awesome stuff that will take no time at all?
There is the question of what is the root cause of the turn over rate for developers? Is it just that the project is killing developers or the pay is so bad almost anywhere else would be better or something else? Just something to ponder here as there can be many a way to get rid of a developer, both literally and figuratively.
To be serious about this for a moment, there are some people that do enjoy high pressure situations and others that want to avoid them at all costs. Most people are somwhere between the two extremes. Where do you think you fall on that scale though?
I'll address each of your three points in turn. High turnover in any industry is considered bad for business and a management problem. However, I've read several books about corporate politics and cultures and the effect those have on the corporate bottom line. One book I read studied several major corporations over a 20-year span. It found that poisonous cultures grow slowy and tend to be "lagging indicators" of bottom line performance problems. It also found that when some of the companies were able to hire new CEO's who ultimately "turned the ship around", it took 10 - 15 YEARS to stop the bleeding. So in a VERY big picture view, yes turnover is poisonous, although it truly is a symptom of the larger problem. A symptom that should not be ignored. (Even though it usually is ignored for long periods of time. Ever notice that it takes HR a very long time to realize that a department's turnover might be tied to a bad manager?)
Poorly built technical infrastructure - or products that are sold to customers are obviously bad for the bottom line. I think that only non-technical people fail to understand this. Of course there is a range between "not optimal but works" and "barely works as long as you restore the database once a week it gets us by". I think the reason this happens is that the cost portion of the "holy trinity" is always chosen in favor of quality. In my experience this is guaranteed to be a hard and fast rule. If management has to choose between cost, quality and schedule, quality is always the first tossed to the wayside.
The problem of owners without a clear roadmap and feature creep are a symptom of lack of business discipline. Feature creep costs money. And when it's bad enough, it can actually prevent anything from being completed.
The interesting thing to me about your question is that you say that they are thriving as a company, so it makes me wonder if the technology is as important to them. Maybe the problem is that they don't see the value in better technology (and they might be right in their case, I'm not sure what kind of business they are).
In general, a very high turn over rate for employees isn't good in any company. When it comes to software, high developer turn over is bad because of all the tutoring that has to be done for the new one, and the "big picture" knowledge that goes out of the door. So if software is important for the business, high turnover rate is bad for business.
Only doing requested features without a roadmap is a one way path to bloatware. If you have no clear strategy, goal or purpose for a product, your only source for what to do is customer requests, which might be bad. This is so because the customers might actually not know what they want, thereby requesting features they won't use.
处理这个问题的一个建议是获取一份The Mythical Man Month并阅读有关为什么向后期项目添加更多程序员只会使其更晚的部分（这是标题 - 和第二个（在我的副本中） - 文章）。许多相同的想法也适用于更换开发人员……只不过，如果您单独工作，您可能还需要重新开始，因为弄清楚前一个人做了什么可能比从头开始需要更长的时间。读完这篇文章后，给任何持你所引用的态度的人一份副本，并要求他们阅读。不能保证它会有所帮助，但值得一试。
From one perspective, the attitude(s) you're quoting are understandable. Software development isn't cheap, and most people/businesses are trying to save money everywhere they can. However I think they're usually shooting themselves in the foot with this sort of behavior.
One suggestion for dealing with this is to get a copy of The Mythical Man Month and read the section on why adding more programmers to a late project will only make it later (it's the title - and second (in my copy) - essay). Many of the same ideas apply to replacing a developer ... except that if you're working solo, it's likely you may as well start over, as figuring out what the previous person did may take longer than starting from scratch. After you've read the essay, give a copy to anyone who's taking the attitude you cite and ask them to read it. No guarantee that it will help, but it's worth a try.
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这三个症状都是不好的。它们对企业来说确实是一件坏事。话虽这么说：
软件开发的存在是为了制造工具。就是这样。这本身并不是目的——您是一名工具制造者。
有些非常成功的企业使用的工具很差。它们的运行可能没有达到应有的水平，但好的结果可以而且经常来自糟糕的工具。但也要记住，消除这三个症状可能会让公司变得更加高效，尤其是从长远来看。
All three symptoms are bad. They really are a bad thing for business. That being said:
Software development exists to make tools. That's it. It's not an end, in and of itself - you're a tool maker.
There are very successful businesses that operate using poor tools. They may not be run as well as they should be, but good results can, and often do, come from bad tools. Also remember, though, that eliminating your three symptoms will likely make the company even more effective, especially in the long term.
高开发人员流动率是一种症状，而不是原因。原因是管理不善。如果这些企业蓬勃发展，通常是在短期内，并且通常先于收购、合并或彻底失败。我已经一次又一次地看到这种情况发生。
High dev turnover is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is bad management. If those businesses prosper, it's usually in the short term and usually precedes a buyout, a merger, or an outright failure. I've seen it happen over and over.
如果你负担得起 - 跑步。那里有糟糕的公司，但也有好的公司——至少比你描述的混乱要好。
If you can afford - run. There are bad companies out there but there are good ones too - at least better than the mess you describe.
所有这三件事都不好，让我关注营业额。
我现在就看到它发生了。管理层/公司都很便宜，所以他们不太关心团队、技术或流程，只关心底线。因此，反过来（最终）团队成员并不关心项目，只关心他们的底线。几个月后，他们认为不值得承受压力并继续前进。我们是一个由 6 名开发人员组成的小团队，今年有 3 人想要退出，而且现在才 7 月份。进来了两个人，还有一个人进来了。看来我们所做的只是过渡和项目周转。团队不成熟，效率低下。我们的客户意识到了这一点，他们没有给团队更多的项目（为公司提供更多的钱），而是将其限制在某些应用程序上。我想知道管理层什么时候才能意识到便宜就是昂贵的！
All those 3 things are not good let me focus on turnover.
I'm seeing it happen right now. management/company are being cheap so they don't care much about the team, techonology or process, just the bottomline. So in turn (eventually) team members don't care about the project, just THEIR bottomline. After several months, they decide it's not worth the stress and move on. We are a small team of 6 developers, this year 3 people want out and it's just July. 2 people came in, one more is coming. Seems all we're doing is transition and project turnover. Team does not mature and is ineffective. our customer senses this, and instead of giving the team more projects (more money for company) they limit it to certains apps. I wonder when management will realize that being cheap is costly!
如果我可以暂时以魔鬼代言人的观点来看待这个问题：
有些人喜欢挑战。对于一些人来说，实现极其困难的事情是非常令人兴奋的，并且有些开发人员喜欢发现那些超级困难的问题并致力于解决这些问题。有些人喜欢做一些困难的事情。
人员流动意味着每次有人从头开始，而不是保留以前的开发人员在构建软件时的所有想法和想法，无论它打算做什么。有时，多个头脑可以创造出一件好事。毕竟，有多少人开发了 Windows 7？ ;)
糟糕的构建点是有人可能会想，“哦，通过修复这些东西我可以在这里大放异彩”，有时它可以工作一段时间。 Ka-ching！
缺乏路线图并且几乎提倡“牛仔编码”风格可能会吸引那些想要极大自主权并按照自己的节奏行事的人。毕竟，当一个人有超自然的力量可以用来制作这个根本不需要时间的很棒的东西时，谁需要方法论和最佳实践？
有人问，开发商流失率高的根本原因是什么？仅仅是因为该项目正在扼杀开发人员，或者薪酬太差，几乎其他地方都会更好，还是其他原因？这里需要思考一下，因为可以有很多方法来摆脱开发人员，无论是字面上还是比喻上。
严肃地说，有些人确实喜欢高压环境，而另一些人则想不惜一切代价避免高压环境。大多数人都处于两个极端之间。你认为你在这个范围内处于什么位置？
If I may take a Devil's Advocate view on this for a moment:
Some people like a challenge. Achieving extremely difficult things are very exciting for some people and there are some developers that enjoy finding those uber hard problems and work on those. Having something difficult to do appeals to some people.
The turnover means that each time someone is starting from scratch rather than retaining all the ideas and thoughts that the previous developer had in building out the software, whatever it was intended to do. Sometimes multiple heads can make a good thing. After all, how many people developed Windows 7? ;)
The poorly built point is where someone may think, "Oh, I can shine here by fixing some of this stuff," and at times it can work for a while. Ka-ching!
The lack of a roadmap and almost advocating the "Cowboy coding" style may appeal to those that want great autonomy and just move to their own beat. After all, who needs methodologies and best practices when one has supernatural powers to use to make this awesome stuff that will take no time at all?
There is the question of what is the root cause of the turn over rate for developers? Is it just that the project is killing developers or the pay is so bad almost anywhere else would be better or something else? Just something to ponder here as there can be many a way to get rid of a developer, both literally and figuratively.
To be serious about this for a moment, there are some people that do enjoy high pressure situations and others that want to avoid them at all costs. Most people are somwhere between the two extremes. Where do you think you fall on that scale though?
我将依次解决您的三点。任何行业的高流动率都被认为对业务不利并且是管理问题。然而，我读过几本有关企业政治和文化及其对企业利润的影响的书籍。我读过的一本书研究了几家大公司 20 年来的情况。研究发现，有毒培养物生长缓慢，并且往往是底线绩效问题的“滞后指标”。它还发现，当一些公司能够聘请新的首席执行官并最终“扭转局面”时，需要 10 到 15 年的时间才能止血。因此，从大局来看，人员流动确实是有害的，尽管它确实是更大问题的症状。这是一个不容忽视的症状。 （尽管它通常会在很长一段时间内被忽视。是否注意到人力资源部门需要很长时间才能意识到部门的人员流动可能与糟糕的经理有关？）
技术基础设施建设不佳 - 或销售给客户的产品显然不利于盈利。我认为只有非技术人员无法理解这一点。当然，“不是最佳但有效”和“只要每周恢复一次数据库就勉强有效”之间存在一个范围。我认为发生这种情况的原因是“神圣三位一体”的成本部分总是被选择为有利于质量。根据我的经验，这肯定是一条硬性规定。如果管理层必须在成本、质量和进度之间做出选择，那么质量总是第一个被抛到一边的。
所有者没有明确的路线图和功能蔓延的问题是缺乏业务纪律的症状。功能蔓延需要花钱。当情况足够糟糕时，它实际上会阻止任何事情完成。
I'll address each of your three points in turn. High turnover in any industry is considered bad for business and a management problem. However, I've read several books about corporate politics and cultures and the effect those have on the corporate bottom line. One book I read studied several major corporations over a 20-year span. It found that poisonous cultures grow slowy and tend to be "lagging indicators" of bottom line performance problems. It also found that when some of the companies were able to hire new CEO's who ultimately "turned the ship around", it took 10 - 15 YEARS to stop the bleeding. So in a VERY big picture view, yes turnover is poisonous, although it truly is a symptom of the larger problem. A symptom that should not be ignored. (Even though it usually is ignored for long periods of time. Ever notice that it takes HR a very long time to realize that a department's turnover might be tied to a bad manager?)
Poorly built technical infrastructure - or products that are sold to customers are obviously bad for the bottom line. I think that only non-technical people fail to understand this. Of course there is a range between "not optimal but works" and "barely works as long as you restore the database once a week it gets us by". I think the reason this happens is that the cost portion of the "holy trinity" is always chosen in favor of quality. In my experience this is guaranteed to be a hard and fast rule. If management has to choose between cost, quality and schedule, quality is always the first tossed to the wayside.
The problem of owners without a clear roadmap and feature creep are a symptom of lack of business discipline. Feature creep costs money. And when it's bad enough, it can actually prevent anything from being completed.
对我来说，你的问题有趣的是，你说他们作为一家公司正在蓬勃发展，所以这让我想知道技术对他们是否同样重要。也许问题在于他们没有看到更好技术的价值（他们的情况可能是对的，我不确定他们是什么类型的业务）。
The interesting thing to me about your question is that you say that they are thriving as a company, so it makes me wonder if the technology is as important to them. Maybe the problem is that they don't see the value in better technology (and they might be right in their case, I'm not sure what kind of business they are).
一般来说，员工流动率过高对任何公司来说都不是好事。就软件而言，开发人员的高流动率是不好的，因为必须为新开发人员提供所有辅导，并且“大局”知识会被遗忘。因此，如果软件对企业很重要，那么高流动率对企业不利。
仅在没有路线图的情况下执行请求的功能是通往膨胀软件的单向路径。如果你的产品没有明确的策略、目标或目的，那么你要做的事情的唯一来源就是客户的要求，这可能很糟糕。之所以如此，是因为客户实际上可能不知道他们想要什么，从而请求他们不会使用的功能。
In general, a very high turn over rate for employees isn't good in any company. When it comes to software, high developer turn over is bad because of all the tutoring that has to be done for the new one, and the "big picture" knowledge that goes out of the door. So if software is important for the business, high turnover rate is bad for business.
Only doing requested features without a roadmap is a one way path to bloatware. If you have no clear strategy, goal or purpose for a product, your only source for what to do is customer requests, which might be bad. This is so because the customers might actually not know what they want, thereby requesting features they won't use.
从一方面来看，您所引用的态度是可以理解的。软件开发并不便宜，大多数人/企业都在尽其所能地省钱。但我认为他们的这种行为通常是搬起石头砸自己的脚。
处理这个问题的一个建议是获取一份The Mythical Man Month并阅读有关为什么向后期项目添加更多程序员只会使其更晚的部分（这是标题 - 和第二个（在我的副本中） - 文章）。许多相同的想法也适用于更换开发人员……只不过，如果您单独工作，您可能还需要重新开始，因为弄清楚前一个人做了什么可能比从头开始需要更长的时间。读完这篇文章后，给任何持你所引用的态度的人一份副本，并要求他们阅读。不能保证它会有所帮助，但值得一试。
From one perspective, the attitude(s) you're quoting are understandable. Software development isn't cheap, and most people/businesses are trying to save money everywhere they can. However I think they're usually shooting themselves in the foot with this sort of behavior.
One suggestion for dealing with this is to get a copy of The Mythical Man Month and read the section on why adding more programmers to a late project will only make it later (it's the title - and second (in my copy) - essay). Many of the same ideas apply to replacing a developer ... except that if you're working solo, it's likely you may as well start over, as figuring out what the previous person did may take longer than starting from scratch. After you've read the essay, give a copy to anyone who's taking the attitude you cite and ask them to read it. No guarantee that it will help, but it's worth a try.