Comment by rdevilla
6 hours ago
The incentive structures are all fucked up. It's far more profitable for all parties involved to just slop out some barely maintainable bullshit that only just meets the product manager's criteria for external quality while completely neglecting the internal quality of the software [0].
By the time the system starts to experience strain under the weight of its technical debt two years later, the original tech lead/architect of the project has already added it to his resume as another bullet point, found a new job at 20% higher comp, and no longer has to ever look at that code, ever again.
Now it's the next asshole's problem. Good luck!
[0] Freeman & Pryce 2009 for the "internal quality" vs. "external quality" dichotomy
I think part of the problem is the original product manager has also added this as a bullet point on their resume and gotten promoted. They get to watch the dumpster fire from a safe distance.