An old(er) post that is vaguely relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860 An interesting look at the end of what makes projects slow down, and possibly insights into why bureaucracies grow.
> Really? Who?
> The programmers.
Wow. This is the pinnacle of narcissism.
How about another group of people who don't get mentioned as often, say Chinese workers who slave away at foxconn factories.
Maybe this piece wouldn't read as bad if it wasn't written by a programmer.
This revised statement would then lead to an interesting discussion about which software projects are beneficial to society and which should be allowed to fail. I would agree that a lot of enterprise software tend to increase workflow complexity. I think that's because in a corporate setting, the people with purchasing powers often don't understand how software technologies works, and they aren't the ones using the system.
This is a short-sighted and overly pessimistic view of the role of software. Let's bring in some sorely needed optimism that's especially relevant to the current pandemic:
https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2020/04/05/ANewHope.ht...
Another area where software is actually good for the world is accessibility. Lots of people with disabilities, including me and several of my friends, are able to live independent and happy lives largely thanks to software such as screen readers, speech synthesizers (useful for both blind people and people who can't speak), optical character recognition, and speech recognition. Not to mention that many products and services that are merely convenient for able-bodied people are life-changing for us.
So I feel bad for people who are so caught up in the world of software that merely increases bureaucratic complexity, that they've lost sight of all of the good that software is doing, or at least don't get to contribute to that kind of software.