I’ve worked at a few places where we pushed an agenda of always getting better at our jobs, so that doing things like we’ve done before gets cheaper, and things we couldn’t do before become feasible.

It’s great for some things, but it also gives the devs more time (and moral authority) to think about the flaws in other parts of the organization. It seemed like there was just as much complaining and stressing about things, it was just different things.

I suspect this is why the “good enough” culture of thick-skinned, slightly masochistic people who put up with the same busy work is the de facto standard.

Part of what drew me to software was that you “figure out” how something works, you write a bit of software to manage that task, and move on to the next problem. I amazes me how many people who are capable of automating simple tasks are content to simply repeat them instead.