The cursor blinks. Once. Twice. You click the button again, a little harder this time, as if physical pressure can communicate intent through the layers of tempered glass and liquid crystal. Nothing. The button, labeled ‘Submit Expense,’ remains a placid shade of corporate blue, a silent monument to your wasted afternoon. This is the new, streamlined, revolutionary expense portal that has been the subject of 46 separate all-staff emails over the last 6 months. It was supposed to replace the shared Excel file, ‘Expenses_FINAL_v4_USE_THIS_ONE.xlsx’. Instead, it has produced only a low-grade, simmering rage that now fuels the entire accounting department.
This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature.
Not of the software, but of the entire corporate strategy that birthed it. We have entered the age of the Perpetual Beta. Companies, mesmerized by the siren song of ‘Digital Transformation,’ sign contracts for half-baked, barely-functional SaaS platforms because they look good on a shareholder report. They chase buzzwords instead of stability. The sales demo was flawless, a ballet of seamless integrations and one-click reports. But the reality, the version rolled out to 236 employees on a Tuesday morning, is a Frankenstein’s monster of broken APIs and user interfaces designed by people who seem to hold a deep, personal grudge against humanity.
They’ve effectively outsourced their quality assurance department to you. You, the marketing associate, the project manager, the sales lead. Your salary now quietly subsidizes the final 36% of the software’s development cycle. Every support