I have seen low level parts that are managed well, because employees have skin in the game
But I’ve also seen a lot of what this post is talking about
It is only possible because I'm a technical manager myself and I have a very competent (and technical) product manager working with me.
But for every person like me, there are 10 other devs trying to cram every pattern from the GoF book in their corner of the codebase, so I have to spend my scarce time reviewing PRs.
Most of the systems handle complex calculations. The system is a monolith that has been around for 15 years or so.
It isn't cool. It isn't pretty. Lots of it would be better for a refactor, but absolute stability is the goal. Refactoring things may result in long-term cost savings, but with risk. The business has no risk appetite, so it doesn't make sense. If it works, it stays, however ugly and costly.
That isn't to say some things don't get refactored, but there's a strict business case that needs to be met. Usually if the system is under performing, error-prone or end-users want features/performance that can't be accommodated without a refactor.
It's nice. The latest framework isn't being integrated year after year, there's no microservices, nothing fancy.
It's java. It's tested. It works. It makes money. It pays.
Our salary is loosely linked to what percentage of our work is billable (with leniency for inexperienced staff, who aren't expected to be profitable while they're learning their craft).
If you spend three hours figuring out why things fall apart on the 31st of the month... that generally can't be billed to the client, and therefore it's bad for your salary.
On the other hand, if you spend three hundred hours writing tests and implementing an awesome multi-stage deployment process that avoids one production bug a month? Your manager can totally bill that work (with the right client).
If I were a client, I wouldn't want these perverse incentives to exist. I would want a razor sharp focus on _my_ needs, and assurance that _my_ needs are modelled in the billing.
And for that, I would pay more.
I am the lead because I know, from experience, not to allow this kind of nonsense to happen.
