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Comment by Benjammer | Hacker News Reader

>push for a change, take leadership and convince others

Oh yeah just stage a grassroots political takeover of the engineering team, no biggie, I'll get right on that. Doubt anyone will have any issues with that.

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That's exactly what senior behavior looks like, and is what propels you to the next level.

This is also, in many companies, what the lead up to an internal blacklisting looks like, especially when said company has a dysfunctional technical management. Entrenched players (competent or not, mostly the latter) who may have been involved in the original iteration of a software project and/or architecture in many cases do not take too kindly to someone who is willing to rock-the-boat and challenge their authority.

I'm a big believer in doing the right thing but all I say is tread carefully because you can and will get burned if you do not take into account the dynamics of a company's internal politics.

This is absolutely correct, and so is parent. Like any ambitious endeavor, done well it leads to success, and done poorly to disaster.

Or you find another avenue to address the same concern. Or you find better evidence to support your position. Or you mitigate against bad priorities and be patient until it's obvious that the bad decision isn't paying off. Or you talk to different people to see what you are missing.

Or you find another problem or assignment without this category of problem.

If you tried all that and still aren't making an impact, go pitch that story as you apply for a position with more empowerment.

That is quite literally what senior developers need to do. Not only performing well, but convincing others of the soundness of the design. This may involve a mutiny.

Some of the best changes I've seen took this path (client/server to web; prem hosted to cloud; n-tier to API) since the entrenched engineering team was not making appropriate design decisions.

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