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The first and most important question is, why does nobody on the team understand it? One possibility, which should not be overlooked, is that it was not quite

The first and most important question is, why does nobody on the team understand it? One possibility, which should not be overlooked, is that it was not quite important enough to spend money on maintaining a team of people who understand it. Just as the Big Rewrite is often not as good an option as it seems, the Big Refactor is often not a good option either, because the software may in fact not be valuable enough to justify the many hours it would take to do that. So, first off, try to make a realistic estimate for your higher-ups of how many hours it will take to refactor this, and phrase it as "at least...[x]...and perhaps much more". It is quite possible that you will get back the answer, "it's not worth that". Then, you are in the uncomfortable position of being the Bearer of Bad News. Depending on the ability of your upper management to accept bad news, you then either: 1) gently and politely insist to them that the situation really is this bad, or 2) start looking for an exit But, before setting yourself up as the person who brings bad news, get a gut check from some teammates as to whether your estimates of how much would be required, are more or less on target. It takes a while for organizations to accept bad news, and you may need to let people who say "it won't be that bad" win the argument for a while, and then circle back to it in a month or so.

ConceptJunkie 8y ago
I worked for a place where if the decision was between spending X hours now, or spending an unknown number of hours that would be likely to be 5-10x hours at some indeterminate point in the future, they would _always_ kick the can down the road. I can't figure that mentality out, when I would regularly predict trainwrecks and then say, "I told you so." when I turned out to be right, and yet, no one would listen to me. "Here's how you can avoid this being a problem in the future." was another thing no one cared to hear. The only way to fight technical debt was to do it in your spare time, in secret, and then announce it when it was done... and I'd talked to others who had the same attitude (including a manager). I can't figure out how a company with that kind of culture could stay in business, but it did. I think the only thing to do in that kind of situation is your number 2 option.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I have sometimes seen this, although thankfully not always. I think the best explanation of this mindset is, that everyone else is secretly thinking of the number 2 option as well, even in upper management. It's more common than you think.

ConceptJunkie 8y ago

I worked for a place where if the decision was between spending X hours now, or spending an unknown number of hours that would be likely to be 5-10x hours at some indeterminate point in the future, they would _always_ kick the can down the road. I can't figure that mentality out, when I would regularly predict trainwrecks and then say, "I told you so." when I turned out to be right, and yet, no one would listen to me. "Here's how you can avoid this being a problem in the future." was another thing no one cared to hear. The only way to fight technical debt was to do it in your spare time, in secret, and then announce it when it was done... and I'd talked to others who had the same attitude (including a manager). I can't figure out how a company with that kind of culture could stay in business, but it did. I think the only thing to do in that kind of situation is your number 2 option.

rossdavidh 8y ago
I have sometimes seen this, although thankfully not always. I think the best explanation of this mindset is, that everyone else is secretly thinking of the number 2 option as well, even in upper management. It's more common than you think.