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"He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. An irritating “I told you so” sentiment plagued his c

"He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. An irritating “I told you so” sentiment plagued his comments and feedback." I recognise myself very much in this traits. When I work on a new project, I maintain a diary with a section todo and a section technical debt. It appears, there are always many items in technical debt. The mindset of people is very influenced by their role. A developer is mainly fixing bugs and creating architecture that should be less bug prone. Anticipating problems is our job and does not mean we are negative. We are happy when the technical debt is small. I think that this article shows that people have difficulties to listen to developers and do not grasp their mindset. I am quite happy my boss listen to me. In a previous job, I had a colleague who helped me a lot to get listened to. I think a developer needs to have good stretches of time undisturbed to get work done, but needs to spend time discussing with others to understand their needs and provide his insights. If nobody listen, the developer can only complain like in this article.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
I agree. I imagine the beginning of the end is, the agile standup/sprint process. Instead of addressing the code as a whole, we're reduced to picking at one piece at a time in isolation. No development without a customer issue to justify it! Especially the new guy. And to come in after a couple of years of this, and find a code base that is a pile of individual pieces in a loose spaghetti wad, is so absolutely disillusioning. You want to fix it; you know what needs to be done; but you have to add this field to this structure so some UI element can report some crap that hardly anybody cares about instead.
- sdiupIGPWEfh 9y ago
  Just realized this is now me. "A pile of individual pieces in a loose spaghetti wad" exactly describes what I've been made responsible for. Each source file shows scars of sprints where some poor fool was given a story and told "just make it work" with no concern for any big picture.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    I'm so sorry! btw like the imagery 'shows scars of sprints' - well said

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

I agree. I imagine the beginning of the end is, the agile standup/sprint process. Instead of addressing the code as a whole, we're reduced to picking at one piece at a time in isolation. No development without a customer issue to justify it! Especially the new guy. And to come in after a couple of years of this, and find a code base that is a pile of individual pieces in a loose spaghetti wad, is so absolutely disillusioning. You want to fix it; you know what needs to be done; but you have to add this field to this structure so some UI element can report some crap that hardly anybody cares about instead.

sdiupIGPWEfh 9y ago
Just realized this is now me. "A pile of individual pieces in a loose spaghetti wad" exactly describes what I've been made responsible for. Each source file shows scars of sprints where some poor fool was given a story and told "just make it work" with no concern for any big picture.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  I'm so sorry! btw like the imagery 'shows scars of sprints' - well said