u/gsibble's story sounds familiar to me. People aren't rational, nothing ever makes any sense. I once build a budgeting and estimating tool (for architecture)

u/gsibble's story sounds familiar to me. People aren't rational, nothing ever makes any sense. I once build a budgeting and estimating tool (for architecture). Super simple, just worked. The PHBs brought in consultants to "solve the problem". Two years later, my tool was being used on the downlow, like some kind of contraband, because the replacement never worked. Another time, another place, I was brought in to rescue a project. Four devs spent about a year on an enterprisey monstrosity. It wouldn't even compile. Once I understood the task, I banged out a tool, using node.js & AWS for the first time, in two weeks. Then another 2 weeks to get into production. Clients were ecstatic. I have many more examples. FWIW, I'm a very average programmer; I just try to solve the problem in front of me. But I like to think I'm really good at requirements, analysis, customer communications, etc.