> I think this is a great post and I agree with many of the points, but I'm not sure if the people reading this would be in a position to do anything about it. There will always be pressure from upper management to get software out as quick as possible to build the highest margins possible. If this means not researching all of your dependencies, or not documenting the dependencies properly, those will be the first to go.
Yes. Ownership of questions like "Are you building the right thing?" is explicitly delegated to product managers/owners/whatever the fuck they're called at your company. Software engineers have almost no say over that. If you speak up, nothing will happen.
The app being 270 MB and requiring updates every week is the result of following "best practices." If you question those practices or suggest alternatives, you will be told bullshit about "operational maturity matrices" and other bullshit that actual users don't care about because it doesn't make the product any better.
Don't bother. If you want to make good software, you either have to do it as a side project of your own, contribute to a high quality open source project, or start your own company.
Push back. If upper management only allows you to build rushed badly-documented hard-to-maintain tech-debt-ridden software, if upper management doesn’t care about the user but only about maximizing margins, change jobs. Do you really want to spend your working life churning out crap software?
Sorry about the hyperbole, but caving in to bad incentives is what brought us into that situation in the first place. Upper management couldn’t build anything if not for the software engineers.
Sadly we live in times of capitalism's perverse incentives.
Managers push hard to get one more "win" on their CV before skipping onto the next higher paid job. The company board are only interested in maximising "shareholder value" and their already bloated remuneration packages.
Developers are still evaluated on the basis of LoC! If you want your job and a chance at a bonus, then you just do as demanded by the bosses.
> I think this is a great post and I agree with many of the points, but I'm not sure if the people reading this would be in a position to do anything about it. There will always be pressure from upper management to get software out as quick as possible to build the highest margins possible. If this means not researching all of your dependencies, or not documenting the dependencies properly, those will be the first to go.