You are not talking enough about Internal Tools

This is both a blessing and a curse.

Internal tools are great when managed properly, but they can turn into significant drains on developer energy if the team isn't careful.

The reality is that if a 3rd-party product accomplishes 90% of what the company needs, it's almost always worth it to just pay the company and move on.

I've seen far too many internal projects that were pitched as 1-month or even weekend efforts turn into multi-year burdens on entire departments. When engineers get excited about building tools, they often forget the overhead of maintaining and supporting the tool indefinitely.

The other challenge is that internal tools often escape the management oversight that goes along with customer-facing products. This leads to scope creep, poor resource tracking, and other problems that can drown an engineering team if left unchecked.

Internal tools are great when the business case exists, but if engineers are working on internal tools for the sake of writing the code or having fun, watch out.