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Comment by rqtwteye | Hacker News Reader

I think leading in "wartime" is way easier than leading in peacetime. When you are in full panic mode with a clear goal, a lot of decisions are very clear and easy to make. And everybody knows you can't scrutinize every little thing. You take a risk and see if it works out.

In peacetime you have more time, goals are not that clear. So a lot of people suddenly have different opinions and they must somehow be negotiated. There is a huge risk of a bureaucracy to de developing that can't be constrained.

It's the same in politics. Wartime leaders like Churchill get a lot of credit but I think it's much harder to keep things running halfways efficiently when things are going well.

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Well said. Nobody is willing to take risks and change things up when things are going well.

I've found myself warning the people I work with that we need to do things to stabilize the core of our software and infrastructure.

When things are going well it's hard to get buy-in and the time to do any necessary, and sometimes radical changes.

And you probably may say at this point: "well if things are going well why would you do anything radical?" but I generally mean well as in not falling apart, but not ideal, as in every week we keep seeing the same issues reported in our day-to-day. Cause eventually, it only takes something else to go wrong to expose major issues and vulnerabilities with the operation.

Nevertheless, when shit goes sideways, as it usually tends to happen especially when you don't slow down and maintain enough, people then just want you to fix the problem, and do whatever it takes, including those aforementioned risky things you were proposing to avoid the shitty times to begin with.

I just got back from watching the movie Casa Bonita Mi Amor, about the South Park guys buying a beloved Denver restaurant and refurbishing it. Costs ballooned from an estimated $6 million to $30+ million because it had been owned by a company that deferred maintenance for 30 years. Not sure if the business types would see this as a cautionary tale or as validation for coasting, though. The company that ran it into the ground probably extracted a ridiculous amount of profit...

Maintaining and developing are the hardest

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