> Other times you can work like an actual adult and solve the problems
I don't know the details in this case, and neither do you. But trust me, it ain't always that simple.
Years ago, back when I was still doing the contract programming gig on the side, I took a job for a major multinational. This was a relatively simple concept: write some software that read the AutoCAD files for the wire numbers, and then print heat-shrink labels to go on the wires. Sounds good, right?
First strike: it was done in Visual C++ 1.5, 16 bit. That compiler had some marvelous bugs (such as getting the segment and offset REVERSED when it loaded the ES and SI registers, HA HA that one was fun to track down).
Second strike: my predecessor had used that silly "frame-document-view" model for this relatively simple program (I can't even remember what they call it now). He decided to put everything in the View, so he had globals everywhere. Of course, they were getting clobbered, and of COURSE, I had to find each of these bugs.
Third: the people with this company had no idea what they wanted it to actually do. They said, "the stuff for the heater wiring starts with 'H," the motor wiring with 'M', and so on ... except for when it doesn't." (That's not a joke.) In other words, the files that I was reading (with a horrible third-party bolt-on DLL, by the way) weren't even guaranteed to be standardized!
I left this project and moved on to more pleasant things. That cured me. I went back into radio engineering, even though (with no false modesty) I was actually a very good programmer.
OH, and did I mention that this was using Visual C++ 1.5? Make sure you don't miss that. :)