The other day, while I was in the shower, thinking about the class-leading extensibility and unsurpassed flexibility of our next-generation Asynchronous Normalized Multiplexer®, and what that really means to Mr. Joe Average CIO as he slogs through the trenches day after day, it occurred to me that few of us involved with the software industry are very much in touch with what real-world end-users really want.

Oh, we think we know what they need. And our middle managers think they know what end-users need, or at least they think they know what their sub-divisional Vice President demands that he knows what end-users need, but is there any evidence? How can we all be so sure that we are the anointed ones, who actually know what real-world end-users need, or much less, what they want? What if all they really want is for us to just shut up and go away, and quit wasting their time with superfluous functionality and half-baked features? What if they just want a UI that doesn’t constantly undermine their productivity, doesn’t aggravate or induce repetitive stress injuries, and pile on more anxiety?

I’m afraid that is far, far too much to ask. (And I should be pilloried for even mentioning it.)

Last year, when I attended the apparently prestigious Industrial Informatics Symposium in New York, I mused publicly about what we like to think — among ourselves in the Flignitz Asynchronous Product Architecture group — that users want. Sadly, some of my colleagues in the “industry press” were not too kind in their gibbering reactions. I dare say, they were quite unkind, and furthermore, they completely missed the point.

So what occurred to me, a few days ago in the shower, was that the software industry is not only evolving through a major upheaval of our traditional business models, but that we have somehow accumulated a vast posse of sycophants, following us around and blabbering on and on about us, while we blabber on and on about what customers/users really want, when none of us has the foggiest idea.

I guess one of the nice things about being employed by Flignitz Corporation is that they allow me to say things like this, and often with no more than an officially stern reprimand, although I usually have to sit through a 2-hour raving castigation in my egomaniacal boss’s office, occasionally dodging droplets of his saliva as he rants about how I am the very epitome of what’s wrong with our company, and indeed, the rest of the world. But then, I am free to go back to my office, bark harshly at my own direct-report subordinates about their various annoying personal habits that trigger my overly sensitive and irrational pet peeves, slam the door and sit at my desk in a catatonic sulk, and stare out the window while I contemplate my boss’s spectacular and untimely (though probably accidental) demise.

Somehow, all of this gives me hope, and renewed optimism for our whole miserable industry, and for Flignitz Corporation in particular.

~ Markus