It was rough going for the first week or so but by the second week I had a large number of folders and filtering rules set up. I had at least 80% of the emails being marked as read and tucked away as soon as they were received, since they were mostly log files I only needed to look at if something went wrong.
The problem is people not learning to properly use a tool that they spend a big part of their time with, and instead fearing that if they touch one wrong thing, one wrong button, their computer or smartphone will explode.
I have no idea how to cure people of this problem. I have been trying to teach my dad how to use his computer and phone nearly all my life. He's learning things, sure, but there's never any moment where I feel like I've handed him the keys to the Corvette, so to speak. Each time I show him how to do something, it's like I'm driving him to a different appointment.
I don't buy that email is broken, not anymore than other communication means at least. The clients may be too hard to use or too limited in functionality. The sad truth is that beyond a few walled of webmail solutions, like Gmail or Yahoo, development of email clients have stalled. Add to that companies that spend zero effort in education staff in using Outlook (because let's face it, we're talking about Outlook for the most part, when talking work emails).
(It'd have been a lot easier if I was more tolerating of errors, but the entire reason I was updating it was to eliminate errors that had started getting annoying. And I'm guessing errors are one reason why some people don't use filters.)
If Google makes this difficult, that's on them.
OTOH, I'm told you can't apply Sieve filters retroactively? That sounds completely awful.
The problem is people not learning to properly use a tool that they spend a big part of their time with, and instead fearing that if they touch one wrong thing, one wrong button, their computer or smartphone will explode.