Finding out about how the software development industry works is actually another crucial layer to understanding how your sausage gets made, in regards to technology. People tend to get really mad at programmers for not making things JUST WORK, when in reality there are usually insane deadlines put in place for which management types can't (or are unwilling) to change, thus the engineers get shafted.
90% of the time, lead developers at companies know when something is trout (be it a bad workflow or buggy program), but business pressures prevent them from doing things the right way. Same goes for IT support who enact absurd policies. Generally they/we are just being told to make things happen or it's our ass.
Source: Am a programmer who used to work in that kind of environment and got shat on regularly by customers/management.
edit: Not to say that there aren't programmers who are just incompetent. I'm probably one of them. But a lot of complaints about workflow/functionality/"you piece of trout why don't you work" are aimed at generally decent (if not pretty good) works of engineering and said engineers get the shaft for decisions made as a result of business/market pressures.




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