Maye Enterprise Software Doesn’t Have to Suck Anymore
There is an uncomfortable truth about most non-tech enterprises: a lot of their software is insanely shit. I don't mean that the engineers are shit. In many cases, the opposite is true. I've worked with plenty of smart engineers who were perfectly capable of building good software. The problem is that good software is expensive, and for a long time the economics of building it simply didn't make…
Most non-technology companies often have software that is incredibly poor. It's not that the engineers are incompetent; the issue lies in the economics of building good software. In a large enterprise, there's an internal system that employees must use daily. The interface is confusing, workflows are inefficient, the codebase is messy, and no one wants to invest time in fixing it. Engineers know the software needs a major rewrite, but they also understand the risks of doing so.
The business doesn't see a direct benefit from spending time on a refactor. They don't gain new customers, revenue streams, or features to showcase. From the executive's perspective, approving a three-month project that simply makes the software "less terrible" is a tough sell. Moreover, if employees have no choice but to use the system, there's even less incentive to improve it.
This mindset is understandable. If your customers are employees who have no alternative, the focus shifts from user experience to operational functionality. Companies need a specific feature by a certain date, the team is short-staffed, and there's a massive backlog. The budget holder doesn't personally use the software, and the person who understands the architecture is concerned about meeting the deadline.
If the code gets slightly worse, it won't affect anyone's quarterly report. So, they ship it, and the cycle continues. Eventually, the software becomes so bad that everyone despises it.
The hidden cost of using terrible software is enormous. Even though the software technically works, it makes thousands of employees' lives slightly worse every day. A workflow that should take minutes may take hours, a page that should load instantly takes seconds, and employees have to enter the same information into multiple systems.
Errors are nonsensical, and forms reset randomly. These minute annoyances may seem insignificant, but when compounded, they result in thousands of hours of wasted time annually. This doesn't even account for the psychological impact: frustration, loss of momentum, distrust in systems, and a growing disdain for the job itself.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
