This resonates strongly and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it.
I recognized this problem in the 90's because I worked at a manufacturing plant where the software, even then, was getting in the way of workers needing to do something a bit non-standard (they developed workarounds over time).
It's also why I'm a big fan of the 80% solution, I think there's a level of hubris involved in going for the 100% solution for everything.
To your point about trust, it's something I've been thinking about recently. Not trust, but the authoritarian nature of software, which expresses itself and is purchased for the ability to distrust. You'll see this in things like debates about whether or not developers should be allowed to affect the deployment via yaml files or not. What makes it difficult is there is often a legitimate need for these sorts of systems, especially for regulatory compliance, but more often than not they just get in the way of actual work.
I recognized this problem in the 90's because I worked at a manufacturing plant where the software, even then, was getting in the way of workers needing to do something a bit non-standard (they developed workarounds over time).
It's also why I'm a big fan of the 80% solution, I think there's a level of hubris involved in going for the 100% solution for everything.
To your point about trust, it's something I've been thinking about recently. Not trust, but the authoritarian nature of software, which expresses itself and is purchased for the ability to distrust. You'll see this in things like debates about whether or not developers should be allowed to affect the deployment via yaml files or not. What makes it difficult is there is often a legitimate need for these sorts of systems, especially for regulatory compliance, but more often than not they just get in the way of actual work.