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This is a classic.

It usually takes an experienced engineer a 15 minutes tour around a building watching the machines to know exactly how you have done anything. It takes years an millions of dollars for your company to iterate on the specific layout, from the infinite possibilities.

I have seen so many derivatives of this system, like courting/buying the gatekeeper with expensive gifts (laptops, very cheap vacations) or compliments in order to gain access.

It is relevant here to talk about what Apple did with DropBox. They invited those guys to a tour around Apple HQ(probably with bed sheets over machines), but Steve Jobs got angry when the people of DropBox did not reciprocate and invited Apple folks to a neutral place instead.

It became clear Apple just wanted to know all the internals in order to copy them strait, just with mountains of money.



Dropbox is software; their office machines aren't their secret sauce. Their secret sauce is not demanding OS lockin.


Sometimes it doesn't even take a 15 minute tour, just some office photos innocently tossed up on the about us page of a company.




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