[tomxor]

IKEA Effect: This is a good one, however I think it's also a bit oversimplified...

>If you’ve ever worked for a company that used a dumb internal tool rather than a better out-of-the-box solution, you know what I’m talking about.

This is probably not what the author is talking about, but there is a valid case for "inferior" in-house tools or libraries this overlooks. In some cases a suitable off the shelf component exists, but is an over-generalised, over-complicated black box with the associated disadvantages. If this component is an important piece of your product or business, and you only need a fraction of the functionality provided by the off the shelf one, then it can be preferable to create an in-house version to gain simplicity, focus, insight and control.

As i'm sure many people have experienced the opposite of "dumb internal tools" in the form of frustratingly buggy and unpredictable off the shelf components, when these problems are too broad to reconcile with upstream contributions it's sometimes worth creating a less-capable "inferior" internal version more suited to your use-case.

[pgeorgi]

> As i'm sure many people have experienced the opposite of "dumb internal tools" in the form of frustratingly buggy and unpredictable off the shelf components

For example pretty much everybody who has to use SAP, Navision or other such tools. Especially when it comes to upgrading all the local little modifications to the next service release, gah!