But then there is eBay, Intel, CraigsList, SAP, Oracle, etc...
In fact I'd argue that most companies succeed based on being good at customer engagement more than hacker/artist/designer culture. There are only two strong counters to this I can think of which are Google and Apple.
I'd definitely leave CraigsList off that list, but it seems that once a certain level of market dominance is achieved (through hacker culture, esp. in the case of Intel and eBay) you can switch to almost any old pointy-haired-boss management scheme and still survive. They fossilize and move unstoppably on pure inertia.
Ebay illustrates this perfectly. Nearly everyone who sells on ebay and gets paid through paypal wishes there was a better alternative, but there just isn't.
Read Cringley's book on Silicon Valley (the one that ends with "and still can't get a date" or the like) for how one individual, a lowly receiving clerk, came very close to killing Intel after it had become very big (maybe Fortune 500 big).
"pointy-haired-boss management schemes" have killed many a high tech company and will continue to for the forseablefuture.
eBay is the only on that list not dominated by hackers. Yes even Larry Ellison is a hacker, from Wikipedia:
During the 1970s, Ellison worked for Ampex Corporation. One of his projects was a database for the CIA, which he named "Oracle"."
"Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems called "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks".[4] He founded Oracle in 1977, putting up a mere $1400 of his own money, under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL).
And despite a HUGE first mover advantage in a market where size is critical, eBay is floundering.
But I think you and the grandparent are not really disagreeing. A company can succeeded if it is dominated by very competent marketers and sales people... as long as they have something to sell.
The point is competent, passionate people are a great sign of success.
And if you have hackers and sales people, and designers, all of that type in a company... they can STILL be foiled by bureaucracy.
In fact I'd argue that most companies succeed based on being good at customer engagement more than hacker/artist/designer culture. There are only two strong counters to this I can think of which are Google and Apple.