Your Company's Codebase Contains Every Bad Decision Your Company Has Ever Made

Every time your company ignored the concerns of your engineers. Every time your company made commitments “for” your engineers that cost them their precious nights and weekends. Every time your company reprimanded someone for raising a concern. Every time your company got angry when someone pushed back on the work. Every time an engineer was overlooked for a raise or promotion. Every time an unqualified individual was selected for that raise or promotion. Every time politics won over merit.

All of that made it into the codebase. Unhappy, disengaged employees do not write elegant clean code that can inspire future developers and live on for years - unhappy, disengaged engineers turn in code of the “good enough” variety. And it’s not just engineering, it’s everyone.

The only difference…assets from groups like sales and marketing can be easily replaced and updated, but codebases? Those live on.

So when unexpected issues occur when new features are being implemented, you might be seeing the results of those bad decisions.

The good thing though…GOOD decisions live on too. Investments in knowledge sharing, conferences, dignified working agreements live on in the code base. An exemplary well-written piece of code can create a legacy of inspired engineers. A simpler solution is easier to build off of and expand.

Do your best to make the best decisions. They live on and will haunt you in more ways than you initially thought!