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Comment by aleph_minus_one | Hacker News Reader

> If you’re working on an app or software that has few users, no revenue or minimal revenue, tolerance to bugs is higher and just another Claude prompt away, Software factories are a perfect fit. Most personal software or hobby software or 0-1 yet-to-find-PMF startups belong in this category.

I would rather claim that for my personal/hobby software, I apply a much higher quality standard than for the software that I write at work.

Believe me: I would love to apply the same high (or even higher) standard at work, too.

The problem rather is that it is a very common situation that bosses actively prohibit me from rocking the boat too much. If I make (I think typically good) suggestions, I often get very stern reactions.

At work, elegance is not celebrated - just implement the tasks of users who don't care about quality or elegance.

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I’m always surprised when I read comments like this. I’ve come across far more situations where individual contributions take a slapdash approach and management is disengaged than management actively imposing poor quality work.

You either need to quit or keep your head down, I can’t tell which.

If you need to actively keep your head down, you need to quit.

Doesn’t matter whether ‘the problem’ is the employer, the employee, both, or neither. They’re a bad fit for each other.

I don't think so? It's very common in both large companies and small startups where pragmatism has a higher priority than so called elegance or whatever you call it the "artisan" feel. It's varying shades of "perfect is the enemy of good", where different cultures and business environments dictate how much a manager is going to tolerate your proposed refactoring. At least that's what I got from the parent lost.

Keep your head down, while you look for alternatives. No need to pre-emptively quit, if you can coast and collect a paycheck.

> If you need to actively keep your head down, you need to quit.

This really depends on whether they are paying you decently. The number of people I've met who found a nice corner in FAANG, and decided to keep their head down and collect a steady paycheque... One may find one can swallow a lot of engineering pride for a recurring six figures

And that’s not to say anything about personal situations. Family obligations, immigration requirements, etc.

Especially in the current job market, “find a new job and quit” is going to cost you so much time and effort and for many people it will still be a lateral move in terms of company quality in regards to engineering practices. It’s hard to make these kinds of deep company discoveries until you’re in the thick of it but by then it’s too late.

Personally, I’m advocating for change where I can and not taking it personally when the manager says no. I put in enough effort not to get paged in the middle of the night which is generally plenty for management. It helps that I don’t work in a super strict business environment.

There’s more to life outside of work as well so if you can silo that bit of your life and enjoy things outside of working hours and you’re content, so be it.

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