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> Why should they care? Look, I get that HN is startup-focused, but many companies DO drown themselves in tech debt of the sake of the business case. Then a f
by SR2Z 2y ago
> Why should they care?
Look, I get that HN is startup-focused, but many companies DO drown themselves in tech debt of the sake of the business case.
Then a few years pass and they are unable to deliver features quickly enough - they can't keep Sr. engineers because their stack is a soul-sucking, career-killing tarpit. The Jr. engineers don't know how to fix the code and don't even see anything wrong with it because it's all they've known.
It's totally fine if you're a megacorp - Salesforce and so on can hire JUST ENOUGH high-level folks to keep the system manageable. It's also fine if you're so small that all your work is greenfield.
The type of company that I'm describing is generally Series D/E and probably worth a few 100M dollars.
- scarface_74 2y agoI’m not saying don’t care about tech debt and well architected systems. I’m saying you have to tie that to business goals. If you can’t explain to a manager the business purpose of why you are doing something then does it really need to be done? Your reasoning for tackling tech debt is sound. “We are moving like molasses. Our foundation is wobbly and we can’t build new features until we start tackling $X tech debt. These are the reasons that it will help us in the future.” But on the other hand, if I achieve x, y, and z or someone else achieve it and we are told it didn’t achieve enough “impact”, yeah I am going to do like Google employees do and decide to work on the 5th messaging app.