"Every day, hundreds of millions of people go to work and hate the piece of shit software they have to use to perform their jobs."
The problem is: they will hate it no matter what. Realizing this is the most important step - IMHO - to understanding why enterprise software sucks so much, and nobody does a thing to fix it (or isn't able to).
When you build Facebook, your users are voluntary. If they hate it, they don't use it and you end up with only the ones which happen to like it.
When you build an accounting application for some corporation, your users must use it to perform their jobs. So... since most of your users would rather be doing something else - anything else - than using your application, you see why they have absolutely no good feelings towards your application, no matter how good it is, no matter what you do. At the very least, for the nicest of your users, it means work... it means no fun at all.
This is why all enterprise software sucks... People simply give up trying to build something nice because, in the end, it doesn't matter. Your users will never love your application, they won't even choose it.
Too negative? Well... just look at any given corporation and cry.
The problem is: they will hate it no matter what. Realizing this is the most important step - IMHO - to understanding why enterprise software sucks so much, and nobody does a thing to fix it (or isn't able to).
When you build Facebook, your users are voluntary. If they hate it, they don't use it and you end up with only the ones which happen to like it.
When you build an accounting application for some corporation, your users must use it to perform their jobs. So... since most of your users would rather be doing something else - anything else - than using your application, you see why they have absolutely no good feelings towards your application, no matter how good it is, no matter what you do. At the very least, for the nicest of your users, it means work... it means no fun at all.
This is why all enterprise software sucks... People simply give up trying to build something nice because, in the end, it doesn't matter. Your users will never love your application, they won't even choose it.
Too negative? Well... just look at any given corporation and cry.