If I rephrase the title to "Why are the results of software engineering so bad?" it makes it easier for me to point out the most obvious problems, in my experie

If I rephrase the title to "Why are the results of software engineering so bad?" it makes it easier for me to point out the most obvious problems, in my experience at least. The alternative to nearly all software solutions is "bunch of people do that thing" or "hire costly expert." Software is usually a combination of transitory, relatively quick to implement, mostly opaque, and very inexpensive in up-front costs in comparison to the alternative, which both reduces the perceived risks as well as makes it unusually attractive as a means to achieve some goal. That combination also lowers the bar for what qualifies as "a goal," providing a much larger universe of possible actions available for those who are establishing the goals. With the lowered bar of what constitutes a goal, given that the overall costs are perceived to be so very low, the decision maker feels unburdened enough to choose goals without vetting the decision and its consequences against the standards that would be applied to "hire a bunch of people to do that." You've taken what used to be a decision that carried with it all the forethought and examination that one would usually apply to purchasing an automobile or home and replaced it with a decision that has no more consequential cost than to decide whether one wants fries or carrot sticks with a sandwich. As with the choice of fries, it's not the single instance of such a choice that lays you out on a cardiac surgeon's table but instead the repeated accumulation of what seemed to be inconsequential decisions to get fries. If you asked someone if eating fries with every meal could set someone up for a heart attack they'd most likely say "of course, that's obvious." But our patient did not encounter the situation in which they had to make the decision as to what side they will have with every forthcoming meal, and all the forethought answering such a question would entail. They only made one little decision whose importance was as fleeting as a single meal. Until it wasn't. This effect on decision-making, with regards to software, almost always spreads to the entire organization (and often beyond, to infect customers and the general public as well). The CEO, the VPs, the Directors, the Managers, not to mention the programmers themselves, all make decisions and set goals that meet the lowered standard (or at least a standard lower than what should or used to be the standard). When you lower the standards for decisions and goals, you get results commensurate with those standards.