> If well-crafted software made more money, then all we'd have would be craftsmanship. But it doesn't.
The problem is that people fall for shiny but low-quality things that break or are hacked into after being used for a week. And then they can't get their money back or cancel their subscription, or they are simply too lazy for it.
We're basically asked to produce a quick dopamine hit, instead of rock-solid long-term solutions.
There's a market for disposable software as much as there is for permanent software.
Disposable software is more like the fast food industry. You're looking to minimize cost. Craftsmenship is not ideal in that situation. I find a lot of B2C software fits into this category. If it's trying to get a monthly subscription, it's probably disposable software. You'll want something that works well to steal them from the competition, but probably will only capture people's attention for a few years before some new competition arrives and steals your customers.
Unless it's reducing costs by automating some business function (like a bank's UI). Then it's important that it just works and is stable.
On the other hand, a lot of B2B software needs to work for a long time without breaking, so it's easier to justify paying for something stable and reliable. You don't want your public API to be unreliable or your clients will leave.
I'd agree that the highest paid engineers are most likely to be building B2C at the big SV companies, but I've made a pretty good living working mostly in the B2B space. I tend to enjoy it more because the business wants reliability. Usually when I'm arriving the project is in major disrepair so they need someone to clean and fix it all up, and they are motivated to pay for it.
The problem is that people fall for shiny but low-quality things that break or are hacked into after being used for a week. And then they can't get their money back or cancel their subscription, or they are simply too lazy for it.
We're basically asked to produce a quick dopamine hit, instead of rock-solid long-term solutions.