At big companies if you have to go through IT, it isn't uncommon that you might not get the views for 2-3 years.

I once accidentally spawned a five-person department at a Fortune 50 company because I threw together a Django app that integrated with Active Directory and dynamically displayed a few reports that were relevant to the logged-in user's role in the organization.

I was in Corporate Strategy, and one of the C-level execs saw it. They realized that I could add new reports in a few days by myself instead of going through IT, and within a year they'd hired a new manager to run my little group and three others developers - who weren't technically developers, because we weren't part of IT.

For another ~3 years, the company's primary reporting tool for front-line operations employees lived on a repurposed desktop being used as a server that was plugged in under my desk. We did get a nice, beefy SQL Server and a decent UPS, so it wasn't a complete shoestring project.

I left shortly after IT discovered they'd been cut out of the loop on a critical business process and demanded that the whole system be rewritten in C#.

"I left shortly after IT discovered they'd been cut out of the loop on a critical business process and demanded that the whole system be rewritten in C#."

been there, done that. you have to get them on the phone early and do the whole "oh you're so great" song and dance to prevent ego bruising.

wow...this is exactly what we're doing right now

when i scope projects for clients if I have to engage with their IT department I add 6-8 weeks of implementation minimum. Anything from getting a CSR signed to SSO integration is always an excruciating experience. Going over the SOW and hitting on that item always results in a slow, exhausted, but accepting sigh from the client.

I think you might be surprised at how many people do know what a join is, they may call it another name, but it's not a hard concept to understand. It's a very common thing I've seen non-technical people do and use.

No, but most of them know what a v-lookup is, and almost all of them know when they need the result that a join accomplishes.

Yeah, one of my old coworkers was ecstatic when he learned about joins. He'd been downloading two tables and then using vlookup to join them in Excel. Using actual joins sped up his workflow a lot.

Thats why their non-technical user abstraction is a worthwhile investment for businesses who want their devs to be doing real work instead of pandering to the latest whims of a product director / marketing exec

99% of business users know what a VLOOKUP is.