The wheel of progress: a tale of enterprise, startups, and government
Description
A three-panel cartoon meme that uses the allegory of cavemen inventing the wheel to satirize different programming cultures. The first panel, labeled 'Programmers in Enterprise Company,' shows cavemen struggling to pull a cart with square wheels, refusing an offer of round wheels with 'No thanks!' and 'We are too busy.' The second panel, 'Programmers in Startup Company,' depicts cavemen proudly holding round wheels but having no cart to attach them to, implying a focus on new technology over product delivery. The third panel, 'Programmers in Government,' mirrors the first, showing cavemen with a square-wheeled cart again refusing the superior round wheels because they are 'too busy.' The meme critiques the inertia and resistance to change in large enterprises and government due to existing workloads and bureaucracy, while also poking fun at the startup tendency to adopt trendy tools without a clear purpose
Comments
7Comment deleted
The enterprise team is still using jQuery because migrating is a 3-year project. The startup is using a bleeding-edge framework that will be abandoned in 6 months. The government team just got approval to use jQuery
Enterprise schedules a steering committee to approve round wheels next fiscal, Government issues an RFP to extend support for square ones, and the Startup wraps the wheel in JavaScript, calls it WheelJS, and raises a Series A - then remembers they never built the axle
The real irony is that the government developers are actually following best practices by refusing to adopt untested wheel technology without a 500-page requirements document, three security audits, and approval from seven committees that meet quarterly
The meme perfectly captures the inverse relationship between claimed busyness and actual workload across organizational types. Enterprise and government developers have mastered the art of appearing perpetually overwhelmed while maintaining a single context, whereas startup developers are literally context-switching between multiple projects simultaneously without the luxury of saying 'no.' It's the organizational equivalent of O(1) perceived complexity with O(n) actual work in large orgs, versus O(n²) work with O(1) complaints in startups - a reminder that 'too busy' is often more about organizational culture and risk aversion than actual throughput constraints
Enterprise won’t adopt wheels without a CAB ticket and security review; the startup launched wheel.js but forgot the cart; government is still drafting a five‑year RFP to replace the square‑wheel legacy
Enterprise to the wheel: 'No thanks, too busy carrying our COBOL boulders - microservices can wait for the tiger team retrospective.'
Enterprise: “We don’t have time to replace the square wheels - just optimize the push.” Startup: “We pivoted to being a wheel company; cart ships in v2.” Government: “Wheel denied - RFP mandates 90° corners.” And somehow the dashboard says velocity is up