There’s that old saying “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”. It dates back to when IBM was in decline after a long period of dominance, when there were clearly superior products available but the risk of choosing them was higher than the safety of going with the tried-and-true. You can always be fired for something going horribly wrong, or for trying something crazy that doesn’t pan out, or for doing something that upsets a key customer or loses a major deal. But nobody gets fired for merely doing something sub-optimal, especially when that’s what everybody else does. Too often product teams take the the quick and dirty way to get the feature out, or concede to that “one line change” to satisfy some new client. Nobody gets fired for making something merely meet the hard requirements, even if it fails the “soft” requirement of “not sucking”.

So. True.

(via @mjvestal)