> I'm not a technology person, so I can't make X do Y
It would be so much better if the go to response was:
> This technology sucks, so I can't make X do Y. And if it can't even manage to make Y easy, then I'm sure not going to trust it with Z, and I'm going to tell my friends that they shouldn't either.
If the business types need to be reminded that the quality problem is hurting them, then we should coordinate among ourselves to ensure that it hurts even more until they notice.
This is the unpleasant truth of the matter. As people who hone our craft and want to take pride in our work, a competent developer’s ethos is at odds with maximizing profit.
Lack of interoperability and vendor lock-in, the move toward SaaS software that you run on behalf of your customers, making network effects fundamental to your value prop, bundling, and the enterprise sales tactics you pointed out are all ways that quality of software has been removed from the conversation entirely.
It would be easy to blame the customers. But let's look in the mirror -- how do I make purchase decisions as a customer?
Actually, not a good example, because I usually don't buy software. OK, I buy Windows, but... I don't feel like I have a choice between more polished and less polished versions of Windows. Other than that, I use free software. When I use software at work, someone else made the decision and I had zero input. And that kind of software usually sucks (now I am thinking of Confluence, Jira, and other user-hostile monstrosities).
So I guess a part of the answer is that if you sell software to business, there is no need to make it nice, because the people who decide whether the company buys it are not the ones who will be stuck with using it.