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> the right balance comes with not just engineering experience, but also domain experience, team maturity/talent, market/competitive pressures, leadership, and

> the right balance comes with not just engineering experience, but also domain experience, team maturity/talent, market/competitive pressures, leadership, and culture. I couldn't have stated it better myself. Most of the time it start from culture, leadership and then experience etc. I have worked on multiple projects with varied amount of technical debt. But the project with the most amount of debt happened because of poor leadership. The guy who was managing the project was more interested in currying favor. The end result - everyone's salary was being shared across the company in un-encrypted plain text format.

internetman55 9y ago
A manager I worked with previously was like that--no interest in making sure the project could be maintained or actually worked, only promising things to people who didn't even use our platform (me and a coworker checked our logs before I left the company) and getting "wins" so he could talk about them in meetings.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  That's organisational debt, which is a prime cause of technical debt. It reliably fascinates me that in spite of more than a century of history, management culture lacks both words and concepts for many common and predictable organisational failure modes.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > It reliably fascinates me that in spite of more than a century of history, management culture lacks both words and concepts for many common and predictable organisational failure modes. Does it? The manager in GP, for instance, seems to be a textbook example of a thermocline of truth.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    It actually reminds me of regular corporate life in a confused company— and in turn, this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
LrnByTeach 9y ago
the crux of Technical Debt is captured in these 2 points > the right balance comes with not just engineering experience, but also domain experience, team maturity/talent, market/competitive pressures, leadership, and culture. >the project with the most amount of debt happened because of poor leadership.
mmsimanga 9y ago
To add. It is hard to get funding for technical debt. Senior management are typically not aware (don't care) that a system is only working because some poor soul wakes up at night to clear caches. Sometimes I feel you might be better off letting the system have a spectacular crash than keeping system on life support. The trouble with letting system crash is may be a career limiting. Technical debt is complicated. Take companies that pay overtime to employees that get called at night to fix the system. They may not exactly be keen to have the calls stop.

internetman55 9y ago

A manager I worked with previously was like that--no interest in making sure the project could be maintained or actually worked, only promising things to people who didn't even use our platform (me and a coworker checked our logs before I left the company) and getting "wins" so he could talk about them in meetings.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
That's organisational debt, which is a prime cause of technical debt. It reliably fascinates me that in spite of more than a century of history, management culture lacks both words and concepts for many common and predictable organisational failure modes.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > It reliably fascinates me that in spite of more than a century of history, management culture lacks both words and concepts for many common and predictable organisational failure modes. Does it? The manager in GP, for instance, seems to be a textbook example of a thermocline of truth.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  It actually reminds me of regular corporate life in a confused company— and in turn, this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

LrnByTeach 9y ago

the crux of Technical Debt is captured in these 2 points > the right balance comes with not just engineering experience, but also domain experience, team maturity/talent, market/competitive pressures, leadership, and culture. >the project with the most amount of debt happened because of poor leadership.

mmsimanga 9y ago

To add. It is hard to get funding for technical debt. Senior management are typically not aware (don't care) that a system is only working because some poor soul wakes up at night to clear caches. Sometimes I feel you might be better off letting the system have a spectacular crash than keeping system on life support. The trouble with letting system crash is may be a career limiting. Technical debt is complicated. Take companies that pay overtime to employees that get called at night to fix the system. They may not exactly be keen to have the calls stop.