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I used to work at a company that sold SaaS to big corporations.

We needed to win contracts, so we needed to tick their checkboxes, but we also cared for the user experience (good UX was almost never a strict requirement from our customer).

Our competitors' software was very painful to use, so we wanted to differentiate in this regard.

This made our own lives easier as the training was easier, the users we interacted with (that usually had no say in whether our solution was bought to them or our competitors') were happier and recommended to their managers (where they could) buying more stuff from us.

In the end this was 80% driven by pride (our software doesn't suck) and empathy (I couldn't stand using the software if it was as bad as our competitors') but to some extent this was also in our interest (especially in the long term, where your brand is built).

I wish more companies realized your last point.

I tried to be that guy that recommends better software whenever I changed companies. Unfortunately, being new also means you're not always taken as seriously and you are stuck with whatever crap that is used instead of the better experience you used to have.

> the users we interacted with (that usually had no say in whether our solution was bought to them or our competitors') were happier and recommended to their managers (where they could) buying more stuff from us

And then the happy users switch to another company and start recommending your stuff to their new managers. It's an extra source of leads and sales :-)

> This made our own lives easier as the training was easier

Unfortunately that works until some brilliant mba shows up with a plan to sell 100x more consulting and more training by making the product intentionally much more difficult to use.

I worked at a company in a market with similar purchasing dynamics, but we focused exclusively on the users. We committed to a "product-led growth strategy," which meant no salespeople. Product focused entirely on the user experience. The problem was, we weren't selling to users. We were selling to people in the users' organizations who purchased software. These people did not have the same job as the users, and they had no first-hand experience with the product.

It was a doomed approach. We needed salespeople to get inside the heads of the purchasers, learn how to explain the benefit to them, and coach the users on explaining the benefits to other people in their organization. We needed salespeople to bridge the chasm between the users and the purchasers.

And this is why we need to get rid of middle management. Purchasing software for others to use reeks of inefficiency

Those that write the checks are also a user, just with different expectations than the daily user. Management is also a user that differs between the check writers and actually end users.

Typically middle management are users as well, but they are a minority of the user base and use a different set of features (like reporting). So now this becomes a question of which users are prioritized and finding a balance between prioritizing the experience of the small number of users who hold power over the rest, and keeping the product usable enough for the rest of the users to provide some value in data to management.

Or as I've told the devs in the place I work "Don't fuck up the data path to the reports, it is a cardinal sin".

I've experienced this. I worked for a company that sold software to municipal governments. All that mattered was the Mayor/Town Manager/City Councils opinion. If the reports looked good and the price was right, they were going to renew.

I remember being in site meetings where people who used it every day would tell us to our face how terrible it was. Without fail, that site renewed with some promises to fix a couple specific bugs and a minimal price increase.

> the developers end up having to cater to the needs of the middle managment of their customers rather than the needs of the actual users

this is why all enterprise software sucks

> Some users are not using a system because they like it but because their company bought it.

This is why I use Windows and Visual Studio at work. I don't like either of them, but it's not my call.

This is short term thinking - users who hate software can voice enough complaints to get things changed in at least some situations. (not all: many SAP programs with garbage UIs exist)

The user of SAP you describe is not the 'user' in the sense of the article. The user is the one who pays, i.e. some other business.

SAP absolutely delights its users to the tune of a $200 billion market cap.

The article is missing that part - the two are sometimes different.

I wouldn’t say you have to cater to middle management instead of the end user. You just can if you want to. Of course you need to consider what middle management needs, since they’re paying you, but there is usually room for craftsmanship to bring a truly great UX to the end user. Most software engineers are lazy and lack a true sense of craft, so they usually skip building a great UX when it’s not a requirement.

In enterprise software, you cater exclusively to management, they will turn a blind eye to 99% of issues as long as the team is able to get the work done.

Take one look at EMRs and realize that its sold / marketed to .01% of the hospital, despite 80% of the health system using it.

> In enterprise software, you cater exclusively to management, they will turn a blind eye to 99% of issues as long as the team is able to get the work done.

Again, you can exclusively cater to management, but you don’t have to. Look at Datadog. It’s a great product, but still ultimately purchased by management.

Some organizations listen to their engineers/users too in the buy decision. Effective products do both - cater to management checklists, and cater to end user experiences.

Also, look at their competition. New Relic's product is so painful and broken that despite successfully winning deals with many large companies, they still manage to lose business to Datadog as their end users work extremely hard to convince management to not renew, and switch to Datadog, for the good of the company. Ask any insider.

Catering to a mixture of management and users helps sales. Having a product that users (reports) love will get your product to have internal advocates. Some managers are self centered jerks, but most will at least consider their reports advocacy if the product also has the features they need.

> so they usually skip building a great UX when it’s not a requirement

or worse think they are good at it. Then guard that GUI like it is their first born.

> Most software engineers are lazy and lack a true sense of craft, so they usually skip building a great UX when it’s not a requirement.

From my observations, it's usually not that devs are lazy or lack a sense of craft, it's that their employers are not willing to spend money building something that isn't actually a requirement.

That doesn’t explain why the functionality that is there is usually buggy and lackluster.

Because being bug free and lustrous isn't something that people are willing to pay for.

the explanation is simple - the immutable law of resource allocation:

"good, fast, cheap: pick two"

> I know of at least one that has different versions of its website for different countries because they know that Germans like X and Americans like Y - small changes make a huge difference to sales

Can you speak any more to this? Do you or anyone else have any examples? I would be very interested to see.

That's one interesting explanation of why EDA software like Cadence Virtuoso and ICCAP have had crappy UIs for decades.

I guess "online retailer" example could be extended to many of the companies that are creating consumer products.

Seems that has always been the case. A good example would be SAP.

I've never felt more seen as a user of AEC design software.

This is a very narrow minded take. Every big software success story - Gmail, Slack, Dropbox, Zoom… - was business-to-consumer explicitly or in disguise.

Then again, I’m not saying much that vendors screw up pricing when they choose a price other than “$0,” which is an essential part of B2B-disguised-as-B2C software. Easy for me to say.

Anyway, the boomers you are talking about are retiring out of the workforce, and it will be more likely than ever that the audience will be extremely sensitive to UX, desiring something the most like TikTok and Instagram than ever.

I'm curious how you'd define "success story". From my POV, it seems like there are definitely some B2B successes, such as Oracle or Salesforce.

Slack is a weird choice of example, and so is Zoom. They're both currently getting their lunches eaten by MS Teams for specifically the reasons laid out in the grandparent.

Slack in particular had to take a just-OK buyout from Salesforce and the product has seriously stagnated.

Most software is not written for such large audiences. Typical enterprise software is used by tens to hundreds of people. There is simply no budget to create user interfaces at TikTok standards.

> Every big software success story - Gmail, Slack, Dropbox, Zoom…

Your uses of "every" and "big" here seem idiosyncratic.