Ostensibly that's true, but in the long term we're all dead anyway.

So the company's shareholders might only want the term to be just long enough to cash out.

Most of us will be dead in decades.

What I mean by long term here is more than two or three years.

> So the company's shareholders might only want the term to be just long enough to cash out.

Which means they need to sell to people who think the business has enough of a future for them to cash out. That stretches the terms a bit, but not long enough from the point of view of employees, customers, or what is good of the economy as a while.

Depends on the composition of shareholders too. One thing I recall from my time in investment management was the problem of clients who were reluctant to sell because it would create a capital gains tax liability. At the other extreme are fund managers whose most pressing concern is where they will appear in this year's performance league tables.

Wouldn’t you think this would mean government-made code would be of higher quality (in theory, and ignoring when govt code is made by private contractors)? It seems to be the opposite

Governments are often sort termist too. For politicians next year's election is often what matters. They also have layers of management, in some countries they are frequently moved around so the long term (from any given manager's point of view) is someone else's problem.

From what I know academics in computing fields tend to write high quality software. Not all not Donald Knuth level, but they seem to mostly care about quality.

I get the politician argument, but politicians aren’t writing software or software requirements, so I don’t think that’s it

Not all developers are equal. Government work pays a third or less what private industry pays. You’re never going to get extreme competence from a government software employee.

Never? You don’t think NSA or Israeli 8200 has preeminent software developers? I think your assumption hinges on people being motivated solely by money. That may be largely generalizable, but I suspect there are relatively large exceptions to that rule.

I think they have the benefit of mystique. I don’t think you’d find their code quality any better than the average. I also think you’d find the same rush to market mania that plagues the rest of the software industry.

Not all competent people are driven by pay. I'd say the most competent usually are not. There are a lot easier and safer ways to get paid well than competence.