I’m not sure it’s fear of over-engineering. The biggest difference during my career has been the switch to the “saas model” where software is never done and there is no clear line between development and operations.
The dominance of continuous deployment and auto-update culture changed it from ship-building into something more like an exquisite corpse or papier mache project, where people just constantly tack new things on, pull old things off, and rush to make repairs as haphazardly as can be gotten away with.
In a giant software market, they both have their place and both bring upsides/downsides, but they're radically different ways of making software and some of us strongly prefer one approach to the other.
The difference between then and now is the MBA-ization of tech. The MBA cancer infests and does the only thing it can do. Create spreadsheets to force people to track time (points) and other stupid metrics. These can then be boiled down to near meaninglessness but make the non-technicals feel like they have control.
The result is people like me who want to do good engineering can't. You budgeted 40 points for a 70 point project. Congratulations, I have a gun to my head where I can't write good code so I end up fixing it when it eventually causes some level of SEV. That is, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky I have to bandaid the bandaid and hope to god I can run out my tenure so I either get promoted out of dealing with it or quit. Only to do it once more at another company.
If tech companies would be run by engineering, like they used to be, things would not be this way. Non-technical garbage Mckinsey level MBA consultants are the problem. Second to them is completely incompetent project management. Typically these two groups intersect on more than 80% of traits.
> If tech companies would be run by engineering, like they used to be, things would not be this way. Non-technical garbage Mckinsey level MBA consultants are the problem. Second to them is completely incompetent project management. Typically these two groups intersect on more than 80% of traits.
I'm not altogether convinced this is the solution either. Google, famously, is an incredibly engineering-driven company and these days it can't keep a product around to save its life. Engineers aren't necessarily great at project management. I'm not sure if it's MBAs at Google sending Reader to the graveyard, or perhaps engineering management reading the usage tea leaves and making a cold calculated numerical decision rather than considering for other customer factors.
Who manages those managers? The answer is probably MBAs with spreadsheet driven metrics for cutting projects. Reader in particular was egregious because it very easily could've been productized and sold.
> Google, famously, is an incredibly engineering-driven companyGoogle, famously, is an incredibly engineering-driven company
Perhaps it once was. Sundar has next to no experience in the industry he leads. This is not uncommon. A brief look at several of the Google executives now shows a dramatic lack of experience in actual software engineering. Some of them have high-flying CS degrees but that is a meaningless metric.
Coincidentally in my startup-filled career I have rarely met an executive that was an actual engineer. When I do, they are typically 10-20 years behind current technology (even ignoring the new-framework-a-week nonsense). Actual, hardcore, born in the trenches engineers seem to have their heads held underwater by the sociopathic business school leadership.
I find it unimpressive how much people focus on it. They don't seem to know there are other RSS readers.