> I feel like I could polish any code to perfection forever. Then you know what to work on to become an even better engineer. My recursive function for improvi

> I feel like I could polish any code to perfection forever. Then you know what to work on to become an even better engineer. My recursive function for improving code has clear exit conditions. One of them indeed includes aggressive timeboxing, so on that point we're aligned. I feel you are trying to make an argument against better code. I get it, there are very fussy programmers out there who can indeed polish stuff until the heat death of the Universe (and still be unhappy) but bringing up extremes is not very interesting in a discussion IMO. > Is it still bad after 5min? After 30? After an hour? After a day? Generally, time spent on code has near-zero correlation with the quality you'll get. That correlation only becomes stronger when you have a lot of trust in the person writing the code (including yourself). As above, don't try to make managers look like the reasonable people. I've met some and I adored them but the 99% are egotistical snowflakes that will fire you the first time you say "no". --- Nobody is saying "accommodate the insufferable nerds and give them two weeks to do what junior Joe will do in 2 hours and it'll be pretty good" here in this entire thread. People are saying "maybe we the programmers should have SOME power in some decision-making as well". I am OK with my influence being somewhere between 10-15%; that's expected, I am neither a manager nor a financial stakeholder. What I am not OK with is when that number is 0-1% and sadly that has been the norm during my consulting and contracting period. And it's the main reason due to which I am trying hard to end this period right now and settle somewhere).