zlacker

For most of my career I opportunistically cleaned up tech debt without being asked, because I wanted to. I felt ownership. Now that I'm in a Jira-based job with micromanagement and no autonomy I don't do a single thing I don't have to do.

Discretionary effort used to be the bread and butter of my career. Now the bureaucratic and social project management overhead required for any change makes things too annoying to be worth doing if I don't have to. I don't care if the product works long term, I don't care if the company succeeds long term, I just do my tickets until I find the next job.

>>add-su+(OP)
It's interesting how the companies creating this culture often pride themselves on culture and think they're doing it right.

>>add-su+(OP)
"Never ask permission to refactor" has caused so much trouble in my career, specially because folks think they - somehow - have an enlightened path to good code. They don't - it's just easier than reading and trying to understand (which they don't)

>>clnq+HK
It is like restaurants they say their ingredients are "fresh". If you have to specifically call it out, there is something wrong.

>>add-su+(OP)
I also love how these orgs say, with a straight face:

“oh you can refactor! Just put together a refactoring design plan and present it at the next design meeting. Then after multiple rounds of reviews and feedback, we’ll divide the refactoring plan into a series of milestones that can be tracked and estimated. Then we can prioritize it during our next planning cycle among the other features that we want to accomplish.”

If you do try the whole “never ask permission to refactor,” you’re admonished for creating a PR that doesn’t adhere to the patterns in the repository. “I like this, but we need to discuss this with the whole team.”

So the tech debt spirals away until it takes months for anyone to merge a PR and tests are so flakey it feels more like playing casino slots hitting the restart button until it builds. Agile is great.

>>add-su+(OP)
> I just do my tickets until I find the next job

same. being proactive in a reactive job is never rewarded in my exp.

you found an issue? now its your problem. that issue crops up again in the future? you must have fucked up.

its just not worth it. the pm's and other management are too small brained and they work on negative assumptions always.

>>clnq+HK
the whole "culture" thing is managers wanting to show upper mgmt that their team is happy (even if they're usually not)

because they know deep down if their team is not happy or doesn't smile for the photos it looks bad on them.

or like "mental health and wellbeing" its a bunch of empty gestures that make no attempt at actually addressing the issues of your work (low pay, long hours, stress, pressure so on..)

>>mouzog+yY1
In some exceptional companies that is not the case, and there is really an effort made. But rarely in large companies.