Rant 6

Take a business who's core competency is not software/systems, for example a manufacturing company.

This business may have started from humble beginnings, assembling parts in the garage, selling them online.  Eventually, the company needs a website, then an inventory management system.  They'll start with spreadsheets, using Excel to manage and track everything.  

Eventually, they'll find that this doesn't scale.   Next, they'll purchase "my first ERP" system.  One aimed at small businesses.  

Eventually, you hire a person to manage your IT needs, but you watch him closely and give him very little respect.  He wasn't brought in as a business partner, but as a contractor, to do "spot work".  You still haven't realized that your IT needs will be a forever endeavor, an ongoing need.  As much as you want it to be spot work, where you shell out a one time fee and it's "done", you have the sinking realization that it will never be this way.

This single person who keeps IT running is buried, so you hire another.  Then another.  One of them eventually cobbles together a little custom piece of software to solve a specific problem, and WHAM!  You are now in the software business.  And you can never get out of it.

In 2011, Marc Andreesen famously declared that software is eating the world.

Five years after that, software is still eating the world.

If you want to play in this world, and have a development team embedded in your organization, you probably ought to learn how to engage with them, or hire someone who does.

But maybe you don't have to.  Because in 2019, Forbes says that Software Is Eating The World, But Services Are Eating Software.

If, as an organization who never set out to be a tech company, you are frustrated by trying to be one, then just stop.  It's not your core competency, it never will be, and you don't want to pay for it.

Fold up now, and just use 3rd party services.  As they say, if it flies, floats, or fucks, it's cheaper to rent.  If it compiles, deploys, or whines like a prima donna software developer, it's also probably cheaper to rent.