I think that is a perception, but its driven by not being able to "see" the product of the work. Security breaches, locked in data (poor dB structure or no dir

I think that is a perception, but its driven by not being able to "see" the product of the work. Security breaches, locked in data (poor dB structure or no direct access) reverse engineering undocumented functionality, even just dismantling supporting infrastructure and migration costs are huge. Another huge factor is when business logic is codified and the knowledge is lost from the business and only temprarily held by transient consultants or developers. An sap project for a single region for a $1bn per year company can easy cost over $10m and no software is being developed, only config, process change and data migration. Never mind increased staff turnover reduced productivity. But very few people have the experience and expertise to understand what they are really signing up for. Just think about a 3d model can do for a construction project and what that would look like for code and you can see how poorly we do this really.