Train Time: #23

Today we are going to get technical.

Actually, this is a rant about technical things… but that still makes it technical.

I work in an industry that uses a lot of software: expensive software.

The target for today, is Bentley.

Not be car maker, but the purveyor of engineering software.

To the wrong crowd, this company means very little. However, to engineers, architects, and other technical people, this is their entire professional world.

This software is the replacement for drafting pencils, and  protractors; ink pens and electric erasers; and a whole collection of engineering gadgets and do-dads that engineers used to use to do things by hand.

It is, without question, an impressive collection of programs.

However…

The software world is changing: and not all of it is good change.

From a financial perspective, software developers used to have a built in income problem. That being, that they would develop a program and sell it to the masses and if they did a good enough job, the customer really never needed to spend another dime. All we the user had to do was keep using the system as is, and we were set.

So, the developers then decided that they needed to intice us with better features so that we would want to upgrade… for a fee! The problem here is that most engineers are simple folk. They just want to get the job done and build something; the software is just the tool to get to what they really love: Building cool stuff.

So then, the Bentley people went to the dark side which includes: ever increasing software prices, and mandatory annual maintenance fees. These, combined with assured previous version incompatibility, and you now have a guaranteed income stream.

After all, that is pretty much what everyone else in the software world is doing… why not.

Now, new versions are pretty much a platform from which to fix the previous version, and to introduce a whole new look and feel and functionality, sometimes for no better reason than to assure we are as confused as possible…

Change, for the sake of change… and profit.

NOT to make the user’s life better while using the programs.

After less than 20 years in the business, programs that I used to cost $300.00 and came on a single floppy now cost $6,000.00 and are bigger than entire hard drives used to be.

AND…

NOT only do the programs cost so much more, but the maintenance cost annually is more than the income from most average engineering projects.
Last year, for example, my company paid over $70,000.00 in maintenance fees to Bentley alone and this is AFTER we also paid to purchase it all. And after all this, they still expect us to jump through more “hoops” or they will deny us use of the programs we already paid for.

Bottom line:

The drive to make the almighty dollar has replaced the desire to make a good product, and provide a level of service that one can be proud of.