Comment by scuff3d

Management is always a huge problem, but software engineers left to their own devices can be just as bad.

I very rarely hear actual technical reasons for why a decision was made. They're almost always invented after the fact to retroactive justify some tool or design pattern the developer wanted to use. Capabilities and features get tacked on just because it's something someone wanted to do, not because they solve an actual problem or can be traced back to requirements in any meaningful way.

Frankly as an industry we could learn a lot from other engineering fields, aerospace and electrical engineering in particular. They aren't perfect, but in general they're much better at keeping technical decisions tied to requirements. Their processes tend to be too slow for our industry of course, but that doesn't mean there aren't lessons to be learned.