Less than half of it I've seen is badly written. The bigger problem is enterprise software is all about connecting systems together. That leads to a morass of interdependencies that are nearly impossible to untangle. Worse, there is not a lot of communication between IT and the business, so the business tends to tell IT how to accomplish a task instead of telling it what it wants to accomplish. As a result, solutions tend to be short-sighted.

Extremely slow is a function of the interdependencies and the CYA (nobody gets fired for buying IBM).

And the unwillingness to replace is because nobody actually knows everything the current system does, much less how it does it. Projects that have 10+ year lifespans and touch every aspect of the business are incredibly scary to touch.

So, at some degree of distance, the internets get. the definition mostly correct, but the reason it has chosen (eg all enterprise developers are stupid) is as simplistic as every other conclusion the internets have come to. While there are many people writing code in IT dev shops who really should be analysts, there are also a lot of smart people working in environments constrained like nothing your average startup developer has ever seen.

I've been there, and the only way I'm going back is if it's the only way to keep a roof on my kids' heads. I'll go homeless myself first! :)

On the bright side, most enterprise software projects never actually get put into production.

Haha, sadly the vast majority doesn't last past 6 years due to EOL on various components and inflexibility to changing business requirements. A more common need is the ability to have a scapegoat / fall-guy for failures of projects that have unrealistic/arbitary requirements and/or deadlines set by an upper management that is no longer in touch with technology.

That's actually fairly accurate.

Also written by a massive team with factory-like division of responsibilities.

If it's impossible to make the software elegant because it has to incorporate a boatload of idiotic and mutually inconsistent "business rules", then it's enterprise !