Is it better to spend X every year to just make the Salesforce solution work (thereby not having to admit to a mistake, and mitigating personal risk), or spend 3X in one year to write something in house (that requires maybe 1/10th X to maintain/extend from then on, but which is riskier, and unlikely to show up on future evals such that they can claim credit and get a raise)?
Corporations seem especially vulnerable to sunk cost fallacies.
I’ve fixed 2 year headaches of billion dollar enterprises in a few hours.
Why couldn’t they do that themselves?
1. Because Salesforce is so effortless to keep running, that billion dollar companies can get by with a couple of admins, and never put any investment into building on its functionality.
2. The people who know Salesforce well enough to do that are gobbled up and paid boatloads of money by Salesforce and Consultancies.
OP was asking how Salesforce got so huge when it has a medium-negative reputation among tech folks, and that was my answer: Management loves to hear "this will save $$$ on software"