This can be said just about any profession working in software. The real issue is that nobody wants to accept that software can be finished especially management - because then you don’t have anything to sell.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were designers who fought tooth and nail against arbitrary changes. Surprise surprise good UX designers understand UX. But its like the developer who fights for keeping the PHP website because it works.
Sorry i just dont like treatment non-programming workers as something lesser. So many software companies are sucessfull despite having fucked up technology (by programmers). And its sucessful only because they have great design or marketing or sales team.
If you're a software shop you should have everyone who doesn't write code on a contract and not be afraid to terminate them when the product is mature.
Does that include tech support? What a horrible world you are creating...
Also, your second paragraph leaks of Americanism and undoubtedly, people are happier and healthier with stable jobs.
This is software after all - surely you're aware how throwing out the old solution and trying to build a "better" one results in a long slog of making the same mistakes the old team/product made and fixed (but could have warned you about if they were kept around).
With that said, when you look at Word today compared to 20 years ago the functionality really isn't much different. The main changes are the UX.
- the first is that the office paradigm suck, no matter the specific implementation. We need to teach people about good desktop computer usage paradigms, like "hey, learn LaTeX, maybe ConTeXt not a WYSIWYG tool", "hey learn R, or Python not a spreadsheet", and that's sound nearly impossible even if (I've tried) it's not on NEW/computer virgin users;
- the second is "the rest of the world", a Public Administration must deal with Citizens, let's say in EU we have started to roll out ID card as smart-card usable also for on-line authentication BUT most users do not have a reader, so many have invented crappy solution to use a smartphone NFC support to read them while authenticate on a desktop. The result is a good idea, having a smart card to identify users, a thing we should have spread since at least 20+ years in the past, turned into a mess. Similarly we have "certified mails" where a third party certify message delivery like a postal mail delivery, but again they are implemented in messy ways and nothing is really uniform across EU states.
These are the biggest obstacles not the software per se.
Clippy had its debut in Office 97, so let's please NOT copy that one. Other than that, yeah, I agree. Anything up to and including Office 2003 really, those were all great. (Also includes one of my favorite, underrated Office Apps, InfoPath)
On the other hand, I'm annoyed by the omnipresent File, Edit, View, ... stuff in the menu bar. Even if those functions make no sense for a given application. And then I have to open several brittle layers there to reach a certain function.
I think UI research can do better. And by that I don't mean stashing everything into a hamburger menu.
* Looking at the context of what the user is doing and dynamically showing options
* Using those dynamic interactions to surface lesser-known but relevant features that were previously hidden deep in menus along with hundreds of other features
* Adding a search bar for the user to explain what they're doing or find something they know the name of
....oh, wait, you just invented the Ribbon.