I have spent the last few days mucking about with POM files. Anyone that has done this understands where I'm going with this. So I'll just leave these two quotes that fit nicely:

But there has to be something fundamentally wrong with any tool that, whenever I use it, seems to have at least a 50% chance of completely fucking up my day.

-Charles Miller

The people who love Maven love the theory. The people who hate Maven hate the reality.

-Zutubi

Frustration.

EDIT: For anyone running across this. Now that I am well over the "learning curve" hump. I <3 maven. Seriously. Yes there are some rough edges-- I really should be able to delete folders simply without having to do ant-runs, etc. But its benefit drastically outweighs its cost in our environment.