I can’t say I agree with this thread. Oftentimes I’ll say “It seems like <bad thing>, I would probably <different approach>.” After years of doing software deve

I can’t say I agree with this thread. Oftentimes I’ll say “It seems like <bad thing>, I would probably <different approach>.” After years of doing software development I’m well accustomed to side effects, business constraints, legacy compatibility, time, etc forcing a solution that seems overly complex at first look but is actually necessary and sufficient. I want to explain to the person where I’m coming from and give them a fair chance to refute my perspective. Rather than assume I’m correct from the get-go and start using flowery language to get them to change. At the end of the day I feel like our goals should be aligned to create the ideal balance of software for the larger goal. They should also be able to think critically about the problem I see and the solution I might offer. If the person seems to be doing something boneheaded over and over after I’ve spent literally days, weeks, or months explaining easier and better solutions, and I keep getting forced to deal with it, then I may well conclude there are no extenuating factors and “this code is shit” just because of the person’s ego. If somebody starts asking me to ‘walk them through the code’, that’d be a red flag to me. If this is someone technical, then I’d expect them to be able to follow the code themselves. If this is someone non-technical, then I expect that giving them knowledge is going to be more dangerous than useful. It’s also disingenuous and feels like it creates a sort of prisoner’s dilemma. If I’m open about the pros and cons and details of my ideas, but they’re closed and use persuasive language to advocate for their own ideas, I don’t feel like it’s really a collaborative process anymore. They’re taking a route that gives them a distinct advantage, not because their ideas are better at meeting the overall goal, but because they’re tapping into people’s subjective preferences and drives to further their own self-interests. Lots of companies do have this culture, but the end result seems to be to create an echo chamber where a blind eye is turned to vast inefficiency. Oftentimes this seems to be things that are hard to quantify like user experience and reliability or security, where you silently lose customers without a ticket being opened, so there’s no business pushback to bad technical decisions that hurt the product.