The impossible dream of good workplace software
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Hello, and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking to my good friend, David Pearce, who's my co-host on The Verge cast and The Verge's editor at large. And we're talking about something that David spends, honestly, too much time thinking and writing about, software. Specifically, we're talking about the software you use at work, the stuff you like or maybe just tolerate and use every day, the stuff you probably hate and try to avoid using at all costs, and the stuff you love and hate because your job revolves around using it all day long. It's fair to say that businesses of all kinds changed radically when software entered the office.
That's the foundation of the famous Marc Andreessen quote, software is eating the world. And now it seems like it's all about to change again as AI automates more and more of that software. At least, that's if you believe all the CEOs who have come onto Coder in the last year telling me that's what's about to happen. These tools are all usually lumped together in a big bucket we call enterprise software, but there are often meaningful overlaps with the popular productivity tools many of us use in our regular lives as well. So first, I wanted David's help in just defining it all. Then I wanted to talk about how it's designed, and how that design shapes how we work every day in subtle and powerful ways.
That's everything from the big familiar bundles like Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workplace all the way down to familiar single tools like Slack. But as you'll hear David explain, we're starting to see scores of new apps crop up to handle very specific use cases built around clever metaphors and interesting new interfaces that try and rewire our brains to make us work differently. hopefully faster, more efficiently, and lately, more remotely. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it really, really does not. Something is changing about software at work, and I often find the best way to understand the future is to take a moment and consider the present. Okay, David Pierce, Software at Work. Here we go. David Pierce, welcome to Decoder.
Thank you. It's an honor.
Is this your first time on Decoder?
Ironically, I hosted the show before I was a guest on the show. I did a thing with Sean Hollister a while ago when you were off, you know, gallivanting somewhere. But now I get to be here talking to you.
Well, it's interesting because you and I host another show together. But usually when we do other episodes of that show, I'm the guest and you're the host. And now the tables have finally turned. I know. I don't know how I feel about it. Only... The penalty is that you have to talk about enterprise software on this show. I've brought this on myself. That's very much the difference between Decoder and the Verge cast is on this show, we're going to talk about enterprise software at great length. So you, in addition to hosting the Verge cast with me and being editor-at-large of the Verge, you also write Installer, which is our newsletter where you try all kinds of software. I believe you do this as a form of therapy because you are addicted to software, which I'm worried about you as your friend. I'm worried that this is a problem that you have. But it means you have tried a lot of software in your life.
I have, I think I've come to see this as less of a procrastination technique of taking all of the tasks that I have in one place and putting them in another place rather than completing any of them because it still feels productive, even though I don't have to do anything as constantly rethinking the way that I do everything, which again, you could argue that's not productive at all. It's probably not, but I, I have spent probably more time thinking about how I do stuff than than almost anyone I know. I don't know if it's useful. I don't know if it helps. I end up just back in the same apps 400 different times a year, but it is a thing I have spent way too much time and energy on over the years.
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