Having read this and a bunch of the replies, maybe I can point to a bit of the reason we kinda disagree with our gut. Often times, we see vendors that seem was

Having read this and a bunch of the replies, maybe I can point to a bit of the reason we kinda disagree with our gut. Often times, we see vendors that seem wasteful, that are overcharging, have a product that's average at best, or trying to get an extra 20% from their business model. We know it can be done better. This article stands up and says "no, you just need it done." I think that goes against what so many of us feel and do in our lives. No, you don't need to read a dozen reviews of TVs, just go to the BestBuy and get yourself a standard TV, and it doesn't even matter if you end up spending $300 more on it. All that time you're reading reviews and comparing stuff is costing you way more. Yes, Slack feels like a lot of money for just a chat program, but the company just wants that done rather than you spending a couple weeks installing Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, and Zulip, figuring out how to make them high availability and backed up and everything, and making a comparison to present to people. They just want a chat program that they don't have to think about and the $15 or whatever per employee is pennies compared to those employees salaries (or even the office space they're sitting in). I think our guts disagree with it because it's an article that kinda tells us to ignore what could be better when it isn't really the point of your business. Further, it kinda tells us that we can't do it better. This is probably the thing that would get under our skin the most. We're the kinds of people that like building things and here the author is saying that all these bespoke things end up as a hodgepodge of barnacles that don't even get the business pointed in the right direction. The author is, to an extent, saying that the business is better off when employees adapt themselves to standard things rather than using custom tools. To an extent, it's questioning whether we should be writing so much software. Is what so many software engineers are creating even valuable? Or are the costs much higher than the value being created on these bespoke systems? I don't think the author is trying to question our profession, but there's certainly a question of whether we're reinventing the wheel too much and spending our time on less useful pursuits within our profession (and let's face it, reinventing the wheel is so much fun). Software is hard. People often say that the last 10% takes 90% of the time. I think we often underestimate the costs (in time and money) that go into actually getting something into production and then maintaining it. The author is basically telling us: it'll take longer than you think, it won't be as good as you dream, cruft will accumulate over time, and at the end of the day the company just wants it done, not for you to have a project. But we like building things.