Or perhaps it was because there was no layer between those developers and the users, no translations, no requirements gathering, no cards. Just you standing at the desk of the customer service rep, asking them how you could make their life better.

I do miss that often, too. We have so many applications and services in use with shitty bugs, which could probably be fixed in a few days. Of course, all those are proprietary shovelware that I'm not allowed to fix anyways, but the thought remains.

Instead, we just repeatedly spend years building up intricate systems only for them to get cancelled for no good reason, right when they're about to become useful.