The problem is that when everybody avoids shaving the yak, the yak gets too hairy. "Oh, the build server can't handle that one lib, I'll just commit the DLL di

The problem is that when everybody avoids shaving the yak, the yak gets too hairy. "Oh, the build server can't handle that one lib, I'll just commit the DLL directly" "Oh that library is too confusing, I'll just roll my own for this one use-case". The opposite of yak-shaving is technical debt. If you find yourself in "there's a hole in my bucket" territory, that's a sign that nobody is paying down that technical debt ever. There are thankless jobs in software development that basically amount to "making sure the yak is already shaved".