I think the HN crowd overestimates the quality of software. There is a (very) long tail of truly abysmal software that people are forced to use all the time. The reason it gets to be abysmal is because it’s often back-office admin software that helps people file forms for, say, logistics paperwork or school district expense tracking. AI-native engineering teams can create dramatic improvements for that long tail because the people running that software are either incompetent or checked out, and a pull towards average quality by AIs would yield great improvement.

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jmcqk6 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the most uncomfortable truths about our profession is that there is literally no floor to how shitty software can be and yet still make people billions of dollars.

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jiggawatts 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Reminds me of an incident where I had to go pick up a missed delivery (an expensive photo printer) from the dispatch warehouse because the shipping company couldn’t get a signature after three attempts.

Whatever, I drove down to this set of huge industrial warehouses with trucks coming and going by the dozen and found the customer service office.

“That’ll be half an hour, I recommend waiting at the cafe.”

“Half an hour for what? Aren’t all the packages right here?”

“They are, but looking up the package ID in the system takes at least 30 minutes, maybe 33.”

“33!? Wait… don’t tell me, let me guess: it has been getting slowly and steadily worse over years? Predictably taking longer and longer, right?”

“Yeah, six months ago it was 27 minutes! How did you know?”

“Umm… isn’t this a bit of drag on your operations?”

“Absolutely! Everything takes forever, every shipment is delayed, … <long rant> …”

“I… bet. Why hasn’t anyone fixed it!? It’s a one line fix!”

“No budget!”

This was one of the biggest logistics companies in the country about to undergo a multi-billion-dollar merger.

Their core business software was missing database indexes even on primary key columns!

Madness.

	▲	mjhay 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Usability of internal tools is just never considered. Priorities are driven by management. They invariably just don’t care about feedback from the peons that actually have to use them in their day-to-day jobs, even when it results in tremendous inefficiency. This also allows companies like Workforce to make billions selling the most godawful software imaginable.

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moregrist 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> There is a (very) long tail of truly abysmal software that people are forced to use all the time.

We generally call it “enterprise software,” and it’s usually abysmal because the people buying/funding it are VP-level executives who care about compliance/reporting/visibility and who never have to actually use the software.

This actually comes up on HN pretty regularly. Or used to; like many topics it’s taken a back seat to AI.

	▲	t43562 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		...and now with AI much more of that dreadful software can be built with all the bullshit featuritis that said managers who don't use it think they want.