3 ms·

Please pardon my attempt to rephrase your questions in microecon terms 2. Tech debt is a community ("public") good in the short term and an externality (commun

Please pardon my attempt to rephrase your questions in microecon terms 2. Tech debt is a community ("public") good in the short term and an externality (community antigood) at longer time scales 1. The devs who are responsible for fixing bugs are not always the guys who wrote the code

bilbo0s 2y ago
I'm thinking 1 is more like: "The devs who can write a new system are not the same as the devs who can keep a system running." That's definitely true in my experience. The people you can hire to write a totally new system are out there in abundance. But finding a guy or gal good at maintenance is actually surprisingly difficult. Good maintenance devs are worth their weight in gold.
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  Yes! Was trying to keep the 2 points tightly integrated but your thinking is definitely closer to analog31's interpretation of the political economics. There can be a cyclical aspect to the situation: the new hire gives up fixing legacy and rewrites the base out of anger. Probably many other archetypes that I missed, all of which resemble the basic setup. One might also generalize "coding culture" to "culture around legal codes". To pile on your point: meanwhile, the suboptimal job market conditions (shall we say) preps the engineering culture for vicious spirals
  - analog31 2y ago
    These are all good points, but the people I'm talking about at a high level are more like managers, not devs. The managers haven't even expressed an interest in managing anything.
    - gsf_emergency 2y ago
      Ah you are the OP? Thank you for getting the conversation started in a promising direction! Apologies for fixating on the analog instead of the referent, wish you would expand more on this snipe :) >the hacks to get it done this time actually make it harder on an ongoing basis.

3 ms·

Please pardon my attempt to rephrase your questions in microecon terms 2. Tech debt is a community ("public") good in the short term and an externality (commun

by gsf_emergency 2y ago

bilbo0s 2y ago
I'm thinking 1 is more like: "The devs who can write a new system are not the same as the devs who can keep a system running." That's definitely true in my experience. The people you can hire to write a totally new system are out there in abundance. But finding a guy or gal good at maintenance is actually surprisingly difficult. Good maintenance devs are worth their weight in gold.
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  Yes! Was trying to keep the 2 points tightly integrated but your thinking is definitely closer to analog31's interpretation of the political economics. There can be a cyclical aspect to the situation: the new hire gives up fixing legacy and rewrites the base out of anger. Probably many other archetypes that I missed, all of which resemble the basic setup. One might also generalize "coding culture" to "culture around legal codes". To pile on your point: meanwhile, the suboptimal job market conditions (shall we say) preps the engineering culture for vicious spirals
  - analog31 2y ago
    These are all good points, but the people I'm talking about at a high level are more like managers, not devs. The managers haven't even expressed an interest in managing anything.
    - gsf_emergency 2y ago
      Ah you are the OP? Thank you for getting the conversation started in a promising direction! Apologies for fixating on the analog instead of the referent, wish you would expand more on this snipe :) >the hacks to get it done this time actually make it harder on an ongoing basis.