b) because in many years of corporate experience, the vast majority of systems built with the intention of replacing Excel processes fail to achieve that goal.
It is true that knowledge workers are often disorganized and messy - in large part, because actual business is also messy and changes very quickly. When you start with the attitude of "unfucking" and "sheer amount of crap", it's obvious that you actually aren't respectful and aware of the actual day-to-day demands of business, their bosses, presentation requirements, messy input sources, etc. Pure, testable code may be more elegant but it simply is not as flexible and UI-friendly as Excel, which is a large part of why these types of projects fail at such a high rate.
You showed up, unburdened by Excel, and soon quit ("bailed out" -- your words) because the projects were "crappy", "not interesting", "no one wanted to deal with". Yea, boring, crappy projects are a big, but essential part of business!
Lets be clear, YOU failed. Processes built upon Excel are often messy and inefficient, that's well-established, but just like in this example, attempting to replicate the processes without using Excel often implodes entirely.
Anyway, if you advise your clients to build on excel, I wish them luck, and wish you, when they fail to grow or simply sustain, to be successful in explaining them that it’s alright and integrators bad and they must just continue. Cause clearly this strategy works for you somehow. Make it work for them with the same energy as here and it’s done.
