Comment by netcoyote
3 days ago
One of the tricks that we can use as good managers is code ownership. The folks who wrote the code are the ones who get to fix the bugs in the code.
While they’re busy fixing their own problems, the teams that wrote outage-free code get first dibs on writing new systems.
On the (online game) teams I worked on there are an infinite number of new & exciting systems needed, so this approach means that the best developers are the ones building them.
Great as long as no one ever leaves, but the second someone does suddenly I’m being punished for owning their idiocy. And people are always leaving
Especially the kinds of people people who tend to create such monstrosities- they either move up or move on (to the next victim)
The concept of the responsible party bearing the costs is a good one, but if we're honest about who that is, it's often going to be company leadership.
The person who made the breaking change is often diligently following instructions to get it done as soon as possible.
That’s an extremely game centric point of view. Game devs more than just about anyone else are strongly identified with their code and have an artist attitude about. In a non game environment the psychology is different.
That's a great point, and a fair criticism!