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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

I have that feeling trying to improve dev practices in a shop that had none. Years of effort and we’re barely at the point my previous place was at before I even started there.

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It's interesting how many companies are so utterly uninterested in investing in speeding up development but so keen on measuring it.

Why care? The only reason I point stuff out at my current company is because I don't want to get on a performance improvement plan because of their dumb work forecasting solutions

If he can spend time at work doing things he likes to do then why not? He could have spent that time churning out features instead, but now he got to clean up a codebase, some people like doing that sort of thing.

Caring about your work and work environment can make time spent working a lot more fulfilling. Which isn't to say every company or every manager inspires such sentiment, but if you can find a way to care about your work, and/or find work that you care about, it's definitely more pleasant than just doing the minimum to collect pay.

Nothing is worse then when you care, and apparently all the code written/test/work done 3 months by team goes straight to the trash, no explanation. Simply some exec in this large thought that it should go to trash, couldn't even give me a reason. I quickly quit after that.

Believe me, it's far worse when everybody working on it thinks it should go in the trash, but everybody is still working on it because some exec in this large org thinks it still has promise year after year.

I've been on both sides of that, and while I appreciate execs that know how to give a project room to breath and find their footing, I also appreciate execs that know when to tear the bandaid off.

I can imagine caring about something like that if it was impending something important (say, it was about developing software that is part of court system/curing cancer/doing something that I consider personally important).

Or they are paid specifically for that, or they just spend they work hours on that.

Hopefully they are not spending unpaid overtime on that (unless they consciously volunteer to help with something important, not with widget marketing)

> Hopefully they are not spending unpaid overtime on that

Dear god, no. I’m paid for it.

It still feels like nobody (except my boss) wants what I’m selling.

Which isn’t exactly true either, but people certainly do not embrace change.

Because caring IS the entire point. I think you'd be better served to ask "Why do?"

bills to pay.

Ugh. I feel you. I left my last job in large part because I concluded that I had done as much as I ever would be able to in terms of improving things. Staying would just have led to increasing frustration. Better off leaving when I could feel good about the improvements that I made.

That can be a thankless task, but the successes are rewarding.

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