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by indigochill 2994 days ago
Well, a problem in tech certainly. An alternative possibility (and another problem in tech) could be some mid-level developer could have figured out the problem at the start but because of artificial time pressure to deliver they didn't have the time to, so went with the first bad idea that popped into their head without taking the necessary time to evaluate it.

The fact this had to happen in a hackathon suggests a typical disconnect between management and development (and probably poor prioritization by management). Because development knew this was a problem and how to fix it (evidenced by the fact they fixed it), but it took removing management (aka a hackathon) to give development the space to fix it. And now the company pats itself on the back for having the vision to host a hackathon instead of structuring and prioritizing correctly in the first place so this would just get fixed on the clock.

I do think the author's takeaway about the value of simplicity and pragmatism are on point, but that applies not just to code but to management as well.

2 comments

It is worth noting that on their website, their management team doesn't include a CTO, even though their main product is basically a software solution. They have a few sales people represented though, so management might not be great techwise.
CTO has moved to another company with not so shiny tech stack, as far as I know they were the main adopter of Go and other solutions to replace Java and then Scala. Perhaps Movio did not yet find the best fit for the company.
Typical prototype-gone-live scenario. A.k.a. 90 per cent of projects where prototypes are used at any stage ...