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This doesn't match my observations at all. In fact, way more importantly, often what is being shouted is, "we are creating more technical debt than we can possi

by fhood 8y ago

This doesn't match my observations at all. In fact, way more importantly, often what is being shouted is, "we are creating more technical debt than we can possibly handle by doing X in Y way to meet Z deadline, this is going to bite you in the ass after we all switch teams/companies because nobody wants to deal with this." Edit: If developers are warning the CTO that there is an issue with technical debt that should be a warning flag. Particularly if these are senior/experienced developers who understand the insane costs of re-writing production code.

ghiculescu 8y ago
> we are creating more technical debt than we can possibly handle by doing X in Y way to meet Z deadline, this is going to bite you in the ass after we all switch teams/companies because nobody wants to deal with this This one doesn't require you to read between the lines, people usually just tell me that directly :) Your mileage may vary - in my experience this is another one of things where it's not actually true most of the time. Note how it's a really easy to claim to make, and basically impossible to disprove ("at some unknown time in the future something bad will happen unless you let me have my cake now"). To me that's a warning sign that it might be wrong. As a leader (or CTO or whatever) your job is to make the call. And if it turns out you were wrong and there is literally nobody who wants to touch the mess, well the buck stops with you and you have to clean it up. I'm happy to take that bet!
- nojvek 8y ago
  Or you know, the CTO could quit. I’ve seen this happen multiple times. Teams are in max feature mode, introducing a ton of code duplication, inconsistent abstractions and hidden assumptions. Team members get fat bonuses. For the next round of features, they can’t be as fast since they have to fix the mess they created to add new things without breaking old ones. So one by one they start switching to the team working on the shiny thing. New developers are hired, they realize the mess and nop out. The harsh truth, which is evident from the thread, very few companies/managers actually reward fixing code debt.

by fhood 8y ago

ghiculescu 8y ago

> we are creating more technical debt than we can possibly handle by doing X in Y way to meet Z deadline, this is going to bite you in the ass after we all switch teams/companies because nobody wants to deal with this This one doesn't require you to read between the lines, people usually just tell me that directly :) Your mileage may vary - in my experience this is another one of things where it's not actually true most of the time. Note how it's a really easy to claim to make, and basically impossible to disprove ("at some unknown time in the future something bad will happen unless you let me have my cake now"). To me that's a warning sign that it might be wrong. As a leader (or CTO or whatever) your job is to make the call. And if it turns out you were wrong and there is literally nobody who wants to touch the mess, well the buck stops with you and you have to clean it up. I'm happy to take that bet!

nojvek 8y ago
Or you know, the CTO could quit. I’ve seen this happen multiple times. Teams are in max feature mode, introducing a ton of code duplication, inconsistent abstractions and hidden assumptions. Team members get fat bonuses. For the next round of features, they can’t be as fast since they have to fix the mess they created to add new things without breaking old ones. So one by one they start switching to the team working on the shiny thing. New developers are hired, they realize the mess and nop out. The harsh truth, which is evident from the thread, very few companies/managers actually reward fixing code debt.