Comment by JMTQp8lwXL
5 years ago
> Totally neutral party that can come in and say ‘We’re pretty sure the codebase is too complex and we noticed the commits came from so and so’.
This sounds like it'd reduce psychological safety on the team, to have someone without the project context come in and criticize your engineers. The morale decline of such a choice could outweigh the benefits.
It’s a suggestion. Generally, code complexity is created by someone that is actually pretty knowledgeable and competent. A straight confrontation won’t easily neutralize such a person in a discussion. They will know how to defend. If they also have peers they are close with, those friends will also negligently condone it with a simple ‘I don’t see anything wrong with that implementation’.
It’s a tough one, so I don’t even know where to begin other than an independent arbiter. Anyhow, I agree with you that it is a delicate matter from an emotional perspective (even though the underlying can be a reasonably objective matter).