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I don’t understand the disdain here in Hacker News for enterprise software. Every now and then this type of post would show up, decrying how terrible the user i

by hbarka 4y ago

I don’t understand the disdain here in Hacker News for enterprise software. Every now and then this type of post would show up, decrying how terrible the user interface is or how awful looking the fonts are and how they can program the same functions in 1000 lines of code and support thousands of users. These companies have revenue in the billions. They have enabled large companies, since before many of us were born. Your payroll and accrued sick leave and benefits deductions and AP/AR doesn’t miss a beat because of these companies. Apple runs on SAP (and Oracle and Workday), mind you. So does Google. Are they bad or is it the crowd here?

hef19898 4y ago
Thank you! I once had the pleasure (ahem) to work with a "solution architect" who shared the opinion around enterprise software you mentioned. He was in charge of getting the MRP running, but he had no idea how MRP works, e.g. he set thought having one (!) use case without (!) lead times life represents a successful implementation... Almost a year later, I still try to clean that mess up...
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I have a similar thing with people who think snow is white. Joseph Stalin also thought that, and he killed 50 million people!
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Come again?
    - douglee650 4y ago
      It's an allegory OP is making to express their disdain for anecdotal correlation, illustrated here by the absurdity in which the story of a solution architect making a mistake based on a single case, is itself an anecdotal correlation …the purpose of which is perceived to paint an entire class of people (solution architects) as reactively decisive with incomplete information.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Well, I did talk about one specific solution architect. One that got the fundamental basics of ERP systems wrong. And part of the problem was his superficial, at best, understanding of ERP systems and underlying processes. The last part is ehat said solution architect has in common with the vast majority of commenters under this submission.
        douglee650 4y ago
        Nice, i was trying to get into the motives of the "snow is white equals Joseph Stalin" commenter. Not a condemnation of your statement.
        hef19898 4y ago
        >> Not a condemnation of your statement. I didn't take it as such. And you really helped, because was a total loss with OP's comment...
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Sibling comment nailed it. It's just a brief analogous category error. Someone thought SAP was bad and messed up an implementation, therefore people who think SAP is bad mess up implementations. Someone thought snow was white and killed 50m people, therefore people who think snow is white are mass murderers.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Ok, you got me. I am no match to your logic nor your argumentative skills. SAP sucks, because its UI is bad. Doubly so because the UI of an expense solution SAP acquired through a third party is bad. You win. Now someone has to come up with something that solves all the other challenges industrial enterprises have. And tell them whatever alternative was developed is actually so much better that an ERP system change is warrented.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        You seem to have needlessly changed the topic. I'm refuting the specific point I was talking about. You seem to be cheering for your team regardless of pros and cons.
themoonisachees 4y ago
As a sysadmin i often get dealt the worst part of programs. I get thrown for the update stuff but never actually use the programs so i never get to say "well it's a pain tp update but a joy to use". When i was sysadmin in a small firm, updating SAP components was always the single most furstrating experience, and we ran Matlab. As someone who has a degree in CS who had to go through "enterprise programming" courses, it's honestly appalling how SAP and Sage are. They're like the Teslas of programming, people who don't know better swear they're great but you can _see_ them coming apart at the seams, and you know that you could do better because you have, back in university. add to that a healthy dose of anti-establisment and you get the hatred at SAP and Sage, bad products that are viable because they were first to market 30 years ago and now have the necessary connections to appear legit to unknowing decision makers. They have revenues in the billions because the sell the same software as 20 years ago at a premium but switching would be too expensive, so the clients stay.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  I greatly enjoy my Tesla every time I drive it. I have never enjoyed using SAP or Oracle products.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    What are doing in SAP? Supply Chain, Production, Finance? I pitty you if it is logistics...
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      Right now nothing!! But have used concur and been parallel to some of the other products…
dig1 4y ago
I think it is a superiority complex. SAP, IBM, Oracle (and many small companies running for ages) are all making "shitty" products, yet, every year, their revenue is in billions. On the other hand, we have "beautifully hand-crafted products with love" made in the best languages human can invent (your favorite language only HN crowd dicking around), and those companies are barely paying their developers and bills. But hey, their products are auto-scalable, kubernetes managed, disrupting the industry, powered with green, recycled energy, and vegan food with hand-picked ingredients... I'll leave it to the astute reader to concur with the pattern here.
- neuronic 4y ago
  Did you really have to add a jab at vegan food and renewable energy in there and somehow make this about politics? Where is this weird (and frankly suspicious) hostility against either of those even rationally coming from? No need to act as if "crazy HN hipster developers" (apparently your perspective) are the only ones who don't understand that there is a very good reason why SAP is still used at Apple and Google.
  - QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
    The connecting thread through veganism, climate change, and enterprise software is that you can accrue significant personal benefits by causing suffering elsewhere, and you will never have to face consequences for that suffering. In fact, anyone who even shows you that suffering is a hippie bastard
  - dig1 4y ago
    The funny thing is that people are easily offended these days simply by including trigger words they don't like to see in a negative context. I'd invite you and other downvoters to re-read my prose again. The focus was not on someone's personal choices but how those catchphrases are (ab)used in a context to promote something "healthy", yet the next month that company will be ready to lay off 70% of their workforce without a problem due to their bad business model. I was fortunate to be in touch with renewable energy companies (professionally and indirectly), and you'd be surprised how unhealthy those things are for the environment on a grand scale. But, YMMV...
deadpannini 4y ago
What you say is true, but these companies aren't successful because their products are usable. They succeeded because of their first-mover advantage, lack of alternatives, and compliance requirements that raise the cost of competition. We don't owe them any respect when it comes to UX. I can see how it gets tiresome reading repetitive arguments, but a solid theory undergirds all the criticism: that one way to beat SAP, oracle, Microsoft, etc. Is to provide a better user experience.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Nefore better UI and UX help you beat SAP and co, you need compliant, and industry specific ERP functions on par with them. And then you need to sway all those existing customers away from them. In market that doesn't value UI half as much as you seem to think.
  - deadpannini 4y ago
    I agree that the enterprise market does not value usability very much, and I would even agree that the enterprise vendors made the right choice to deliver anything at all, in the early stages of ERP (even the first two decades). None of that means the software is good: we can recognize the smart business choices those companies made and also abhor their products. They provide what Alan Cooper calls "Dancing bearware" - it doesn't matter how badly the bear dances, they're just grateful to have a bear that can do it at all.
- hbarka 4y ago
  User experience is fleeting. I like the user experience of manual transmission cars but >80% of new drivers today would scream user experience if you gave them one. Perhaps the complaint here comes from these types of users who expect novelty to their liking. There was a comical reference to Tesla. If you’ve only experienced the user experience headache that Tesla forces on you every time they have a major software update (at least 2x a year). The muscle memory has to adapt.
IceDane 4y ago
They are bad, and the crowd is dismissive. I work in this industry, though I work almost exclusively with non SAP related stuff. On one hand, the problems being solved are complicated and for some products, there are decades of embedded domain knowledge, and they have a lot of products, and can basically do anything any kind of business needs to be able to do, and integrate it somehow with other parts of the system. On the other hand... large parts of it are absolutely horribly engineered. ABAP is a programming language that makes me recoil in disgust. What it is is the result of polishing the same turd for several decades, seemingly without one person or group ever trying to think about the direction or bigger picture for the whole stack(which is just impossibly large at this point, and like a tentacle monster from another dimension). It does work, but mostly because people have been hammering out the kinks for thousands of person-years. As for the things said about the consulting industry.. they are definitely true.
wlonkly 4y ago
I don't understand the disdain here in Woodworking News for Ikea furniture. (Business success and the craft of software development, or of user interface design, and so forth, are related, but not the same thing.)
downvoteme1 4y ago
As an ERP consultant, I love when these discussions come up. It spreads more hatred for Oracle and SAP among the developer community and keeps my jobs safe.

by hbarka 4y ago

hef19898 4y ago

Thank you! I once had the pleasure (ahem) to work with a "solution architect" who shared the opinion around enterprise software you mentioned. He was in charge of getting the MRP running, but he had no idea how MRP works, e.g. he set thought having one (!) use case without (!) lead times life represents a successful implementation... Almost a year later, I still try to clean that mess up...

robertlagrant 4y ago
I have a similar thing with people who think snow is white. Joseph Stalin also thought that, and he killed 50 million people!
- hef19898 4y ago
  Come again?
  - douglee650 4y ago
    It's an allegory OP is making to express their disdain for anecdotal correlation, illustrated here by the absurdity in which the story of a solution architect making a mistake based on a single case, is itself an anecdotal correlation …the purpose of which is perceived to paint an entire class of people (solution architects) as reactively decisive with incomplete information.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Well, I did talk about one specific solution architect. One that got the fundamental basics of ERP systems wrong. And part of the problem was his superficial, at best, understanding of ERP systems and underlying processes. The last part is ehat said solution architect has in common with the vast majority of commenters under this submission.
      - douglee650 4y ago
        Nice, i was trying to get into the motives of the "snow is white equals Joseph Stalin" commenter. Not a condemnation of your statement.
        hef19898 4y ago
        >> Not a condemnation of your statement. I didn't take it as such. And you really helped, because was a total loss with OP's comment...
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Sibling comment nailed it. It's just a brief analogous category error. Someone thought SAP was bad and messed up an implementation, therefore people who think SAP is bad mess up implementations. Someone thought snow was white and killed 50m people, therefore people who think snow is white are mass murderers.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Ok, you got me. I am no match to your logic nor your argumentative skills. SAP sucks, because its UI is bad. Doubly so because the UI of an expense solution SAP acquired through a third party is bad. You win. Now someone has to come up with something that solves all the other challenges industrial enterprises have. And tell them whatever alternative was developed is actually so much better that an ERP system change is warrented.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        You seem to have needlessly changed the topic. I'm refuting the specific point I was talking about. You seem to be cheering for your team regardless of pros and cons.

themoonisachees 4y ago

As a sysadmin i often get dealt the worst part of programs. I get thrown for the update stuff but never actually use the programs so i never get to say "well it's a pain tp update but a joy to use". When i was sysadmin in a small firm, updating SAP components was always the single most furstrating experience, and we ran Matlab. As someone who has a degree in CS who had to go through "enterprise programming" courses, it's honestly appalling how SAP and Sage are. They're like the Teslas of programming, people who don't know better swear they're great but you can _see_ them coming apart at the seams, and you know that you could do better because you have, back in university. add to that a healthy dose of anti-establisment and you get the hatred at SAP and Sage, bad products that are viable because they were first to market 30 years ago and now have the necessary connections to appear legit to unknowing decision makers. They have revenues in the billions because the sell the same software as 20 years ago at a premium but switching would be too expensive, so the clients stay.

brianwawok 4y ago
I greatly enjoy my Tesla every time I drive it. I have never enjoyed using SAP or Oracle products.
- hef19898 4y ago
  What are doing in SAP? Supply Chain, Production, Finance? I pitty you if it is logistics...
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Right now nothing!! But have used concur and been parallel to some of the other products…

dig1 4y ago

I think it is a superiority complex. SAP, IBM, Oracle (and many small companies running for ages) are all making "shitty" products, yet, every year, their revenue is in billions. On the other hand, we have "beautifully hand-crafted products with love" made in the best languages human can invent (your favorite language only HN crowd dicking around), and those companies are barely paying their developers and bills. But hey, their products are auto-scalable, kubernetes managed, disrupting the industry, powered with green, recycled energy, and vegan food with hand-picked ingredients... I'll leave it to the astute reader to concur with the pattern here.

neuronic 4y ago
Did you really have to add a jab at vegan food and renewable energy in there and somehow make this about politics? Where is this weird (and frankly suspicious) hostility against either of those even rationally coming from? No need to act as if "crazy HN hipster developers" (apparently your perspective) are the only ones who don't understand that there is a very good reason why SAP is still used at Apple and Google.
- QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
  The connecting thread through veganism, climate change, and enterprise software is that you can accrue significant personal benefits by causing suffering elsewhere, and you will never have to face consequences for that suffering. In fact, anyone who even shows you that suffering is a hippie bastard
- dig1 4y ago
  The funny thing is that people are easily offended these days simply by including trigger words they don't like to see in a negative context. I'd invite you and other downvoters to re-read my prose again. The focus was not on someone's personal choices but how those catchphrases are (ab)used in a context to promote something "healthy", yet the next month that company will be ready to lay off 70% of their workforce without a problem due to their bad business model. I was fortunate to be in touch with renewable energy companies (professionally and indirectly), and you'd be surprised how unhealthy those things are for the environment on a grand scale. But, YMMV...

deadpannini 4y ago

What you say is true, but these companies aren't successful because their products are usable. They succeeded because of their first-mover advantage, lack of alternatives, and compliance requirements that raise the cost of competition. We don't owe them any respect when it comes to UX. I can see how it gets tiresome reading repetitive arguments, but a solid theory undergirds all the criticism: that one way to beat SAP, oracle, Microsoft, etc. Is to provide a better user experience.

hef19898 4y ago
Nefore better UI and UX help you beat SAP and co, you need compliant, and industry specific ERP functions on par with them. And then you need to sway all those existing customers away from them. In market that doesn't value UI half as much as you seem to think.
- deadpannini 4y ago
  I agree that the enterprise market does not value usability very much, and I would even agree that the enterprise vendors made the right choice to deliver anything at all, in the early stages of ERP (even the first two decades). None of that means the software is good: we can recognize the smart business choices those companies made and also abhor their products. They provide what Alan Cooper calls "Dancing bearware" - it doesn't matter how badly the bear dances, they're just grateful to have a bear that can do it at all.
hbarka 4y ago
User experience is fleeting. I like the user experience of manual transmission cars but >80% of new drivers today would scream user experience if you gave them one. Perhaps the complaint here comes from these types of users who expect novelty to their liking. There was a comical reference to Tesla. If you’ve only experienced the user experience headache that Tesla forces on you every time they have a major software update (at least 2x a year). The muscle memory has to adapt.

IceDane 4y ago

They are bad, and the crowd is dismissive. I work in this industry, though I work almost exclusively with non SAP related stuff. On one hand, the problems being solved are complicated and for some products, there are decades of embedded domain knowledge, and they have a lot of products, and can basically do anything any kind of business needs to be able to do, and integrate it somehow with other parts of the system. On the other hand... large parts of it are absolutely horribly engineered. ABAP is a programming language that makes me recoil in disgust. What it is is the result of polishing the same turd for several decades, seemingly without one person or group ever trying to think about the direction or bigger picture for the whole stack(which is just impossibly large at this point, and like a tentacle monster from another dimension). It does work, but mostly because people have been hammering out the kinks for thousands of person-years. As for the things said about the consulting industry.. they are definitely true.

wlonkly 4y ago

I don't understand the disdain here in Woodworking News for Ikea furniture. (Business success and the craft of software development, or of user interface design, and so forth, are related, but not the same thing.)

downvoteme1 4y ago

As an ERP consultant, I love when these discussions come up. It spreads more hatred for Oracle and SAP among the developer community and keeps my jobs safe.