The impossible dream of good workplace software

In today's episode of decoderI'm speaking with my good friend David Pierce, co-host of The Vergecast and editor-in-chief The edge. We're talking about something that David honestly thinks and writes about too much: software.

This particularly concerns the software you use at work. These are the things you like – or maybe just tolerate – and use every day, the things you hate and try to avoid at all costs, and the things in between that you love And I hate it because your job is all about using it all day long.

Business changed radically when software entered the office – this is the basis for Marc Andreessen's now famous quote: “Software is eating the world.” And everything could change drastically again as AI automates more and more of this software. At least – that is If They believe all the CEOs that come decoder to say that this is exactly what will happen.

These tools are all typically referred to as business software, but there is often a lot of overlap with the popular productivity tools that many of us also use in our everyday lives. So I first wanted to ask David to help me define it all. Then I wanted to talk about the current state of all of these industries and how these tools influence our daily work in subtle and powerful ways.

We are of course talking about well-known tools such as Microsoft Office, Google Workspace and Slack. But as you hear David explain, there are a lot of new apps popping up that cover very specific use cases. These programs build clever metaphors and interesting new interfaces to rewire our brains and make us work differently – probably faster, more efficiently and, these days, remotely.

Sometimes this works…and sometimes it really, really doesn't work. And it seems like the addition of AI is accelerating the pace of experimentation here in a pretty radical way. Something is changing, and I often find that the best way to understand the future is to take a moment and think about the present.

We talked about many articles and interviews in this episode, including:

• Why software is eating the world | The Wall Street Journal (2011)
• Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar explains why email makes sense for Intuit | The edge
• Why should anyone build a website in 2023? | The edge
• Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami Isn't Worried AI Will Destroy the Internet | The edge
• Figma CEO Dylan Field is bullish on AI | The edge
• We do not sell saddles here Stewart Butterfield (2014)
• Zoom CEO wants AI clones in meetings | The edge
• Dropbox CEO Drew Houston Wants You to Embrace AI | The edge