I once worked at a company that sold industry-specific core-business software to deep-pocketed corps who couldn’t / wouldn’t / shouldn’t roll their own. I got into a discuss with my manager about whether our products were essentially — my words — a hoax.

Me: “Look, our products are riddled with bugs and holes. They’re nearly impossible to deploy, manage, and maintain. They frequently don’t even work •at all• on the putative release date, and we sell the mop-up as expensive ‘consulting.’”

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