Brilliant. Someone should have spoken out on this after all.
The flip side is development of this kind of software. Is "enterprise software" so useless that it attracts only second-rate developers? What first-rate hackers would have done given such a task to automate bureaucracy?
Actually, you have it backwards. I am aware of several enterprise ERP packages that were originally written by one or two hackers in a garage. Brilliant people. The original AMAPS, now Fourth Shift was written by one guy. MMC, Compufact, Dataworks by 2 guys. The now defunct ASK MANMAN package was written by a married couple. So was QAD. (These kinda remind me of the couple who started Cisco.) They all sold thousands of installations, for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each. They were so successful that, inevitably, the hats came along. The brilliant people have moved on, and what was left is what you see now.
The flip side is development of this kind of software. Is "enterprise software" so useless that it attracts only second-rate developers? What first-rate hackers would have done given such a task to automate bureaucracy?