It would be nice if we had actual software engineering negotiations instead of endless fighting over tiny architecture details. But, the first rule of software

It would be nice if we had actual software engineering negotiations instead of endless fighting over tiny architecture details. But, the first rule of software engineer negotiations is — don't work with cowboy programmers who refuse to listen to others. Once we've reached a formal "we need software negotiations" stage, it seems we've already lost. We only reached that stage because there's such an adversarial environment that regular discussions were fruitless. Then it turns into a giant ego battle—the winner becomes whoever has the most political leverage, regardless of technical merit.