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> So stop trying. Just relax and ... build up some technical debt. > Set yourself up for a job hop.... While that can work in the short term, I don't think

by gknoy 12y ago

> So stop trying. Just relax and ... build up some technical debt. > Set yourself up for a job hop.... While that can work in the short term, I don't think it's a very professional thing to do long-term, especially when one couples it with lobbying for things to help you bail to a "better" company. Let go of your caring about the existence of technical debt __temporarily__, but then take some time to go back and address that later. Our job as developers should not just be to churn out code, but to inform our managers of the costs of doing so. "This feature will take X weeks, this will take Y. We racked up some technical debt implementing Q and QQ, so we need to spend Z weeks addressing that before we can do QQQ." Most bosses like being told that you're making the code easier to maintain, as it means you will make future features happen faster. I realize I'm lucky not to be in a burnout phase like you are. I just wanted to suggest caution for others when considering a plan to mess up the codebase and then leave -- how will our future coworkers (or later people that read our code) feel when we do that?

logfromblammo 12y ago
In the situation described by the OP, and shared by many of us, myself included, your managers simply do not care about the professional integrity of the software developer. My boss has explicitly told me to forget about industry best practices or retiring technical debt. It interferes with the prime directive, which is to log 40 billable hours per employee per week, for as long as the contract gets renewed. The technical debt is simply used as a justification to extract more money from the customer while doing less actual work. In that case, informing the manager gets you reprimanded for destroying his plausible deniability and ass-covering. There is simply no way to act professionally in this situation. The best thing to do is simply keep quiet and leave ASAP. The emotional detachment is simply to delay burnout and preserve any potential enthusiasm for the next thing. I can truly say that there is no way I could possibly make the codebase noticeably worse than it already is. It was like that when I arrived. When I suggested that it could be fixed if approached prudently, I was shot down. When I suggested that the developers read a book on better development practices, I was shot down. That was when I sensed the knife against my back ribs and checked out. Stay sane. Use the opportunity to be more selective in your continuing job hunt.

by gknoy 12y ago

logfromblammo 12y ago

In the situation described by the OP, and shared by many of us, myself included, your managers simply do not care about the professional integrity of the software developer. My boss has explicitly told me to forget about industry best practices or retiring technical debt. It interferes with the prime directive, which is to log 40 billable hours per employee per week, for as long as the contract gets renewed. The technical debt is simply used as a justification to extract more money from the customer while doing less actual work. In that case, informing the manager gets you reprimanded for destroying his plausible deniability and ass-covering. There is simply no way to act professionally in this situation. The best thing to do is simply keep quiet and leave ASAP. The emotional detachment is simply to delay burnout and preserve any potential enthusiasm for the next thing. I can truly say that there is no way I could possibly make the codebase noticeably worse than it already is. It was like that when I arrived. When I suggested that it could be fixed if approached prudently, I was shot down. When I suggested that the developers read a book on better development practices, I was shot down. That was when I sensed the knife against my back ribs and checked out. Stay sane. Use the opportunity to be more selective in your continuing job hunt.