[BadHumans]

Enterprise hijacking your roadmap is undeniably true. We had an enterprise client that would regularly say "perhaps your company is not fit to support an organization of our size" whenever they didn't get the feature they wanted pushed to the top.

[doctor_eval]

This is 100% true, and what’s worse is that in many cases, due to the flawed internal processes that got the customer to request the feature in the first place, it will most often be poorly considered, break all kinds of valid assumptions (ie, be hard to implement), and will often not be used. I don’t know how many features I shipped for UAT only to never get feedback, but it happened so often that I ended up making it part of my services contract that if they don’t UAT within a specific time then I get paid regardless.

And while you’re working on this useless feature, you’re distracted from your own road map, which is (hopefully) well considered and likely to lead to new clients. So it’s a triple whammy - tech debt, wasted time, restricted progress.

This is why I’m not interested in enterprise any more. I want to do quality work that helps my customers. That attitude alone makes it easier to sell to midrange clients.