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Your Engineers Aren't Lazy, Your Codebase Is Punishing Them (piechowski.io)

submitted 2 weeks ago by codeinabox@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.

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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 67 points 2 weeks ago (20 children)

Oh hey, next sprint we’re going to work on that!

Oh, there’s a feauture request from sales you say? Hard due date of Thursday? But that’s a really big feature we can’t just… okay fine, but the next sprint we’re need to work on tech debt.

[–] bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Why do engineers do this?

Simply fix the relevant technical debt as part of implementing a feature or fixing a bug. That way you can chip away at it over time.

Waiting for the big removal of technical debt will never come. It’s an ongoing process.

Leave the code base better than you found it – always.

due date next Thursday

The answer is to say “We will try our best, but this is very ambitious.” Then you let the deadline pass, usually it’s artificial in the first place. When the deadline passes say: “As we feared this took longer than we hoped for.”

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

To quote my manager from today: “I don’t want us to spin our wheels and turn this into a month long effort”

The request is to effectively rearchitect a foundational part of the system. It’s a large lift project that should take weeks.

Of course I pushed back, I have good rapport with him and I’m not worried about getting fired over this. Not everyone has that.

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

“You want the four year sabotage and effort instead of the one to two month long effort?”

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Yes, the investors require it.

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