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Comment by imjonse | Hacker News Reader

There is a large variety between perfect code and code people usually complain about. Not only weak engineers complain about crappy code and stupid decisions.

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As I got more senior it wasnt the crappiness of the code that frustrated me as much as it was the intransigence people that created the circumstances that made it happen.

Im totally happy with crappy codebases I can fix, I just get fed up coz because management wants 34 new features delivered by next tuesday or a junior with an attitude doesnt want to pair or be trained to TDD.

Sounds like you might be the intransigent one, refusing to accept the nature of the job.

I low key kind of like it when I describe a harmful archetype or toxic opinion online and somebody responds "b...b...but that isnt bad, that's me!"

In the end the companies that were like this "because there is no alternative" usually did suffer the consequences and the ones that werent reaped the benefits shrug

What you're describing as a harmful archetype is the job you've been hired to perform. The disconnect is between your self-image and reality. Refusing to accept that is intransigent.

It doesn't matter if you consider it good or bad - morals don't come into commercial software development. The closest you ever get is platitudes when it doesn't conflict with profits.

Morals aren’t always involved in commercial software development, and likely they never have been in any of your workplaces. However, I think it’s a gross mischaracterization to claim that morals and business don’t have any overlap. I work in the health tech industry, and I feel good knowing that patients benefit from using our device. I know I wouldn’t feel the same way if I was working at some fintech optimizing stock trading to the Nth degree.

The only difference between your workplaces and mine is that I recognise the nature of for-profit enterprise, notwithstanding your naiveté.

I work in healthcare and patient care occurs in spite of commercial software development, not because of it.

I never said anything about morals. I just like having agency and have professional pride in my work. Perhaps you dont.

This has very little to do with capitalist realities. As I mentioned before, the saner the company was about this stuff the less likely they were to eat losses.

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