| Both you and jonathanfoster have raised some great points here. In a way, the working prototypes I've built (many of which could be production ready with little extra work) have been my "just get shit done" approach, both to prove my solutions to myself, AND to help make the argument to the rest of the team. What's tough is that I'm not getting any hard no's on anything... after I build and show working prototypes of my ideas (many of which could be deployed to production with little extra work) I usually get a pat on the back followed by a "we'll discuss getting this out there when we have more time to learn it", and then it goes nowhere. Next step would be deploying the stuff to production, but I have a good hunch I'd be the only one using the stuff, which wouldn't actually fix the problem from the customers' perspective if only half the system works as they'd expect (especially if new features continue to be written by the other engineers using old systems). Ego might be part of this, though, so I think being extra diplomatic and trying to frame these ideas as "other people's ideas" might get me further. Barring that, I might go straight to the customers (starting with our internal users and maybe broadening from there) to make sure my ideas are actually worthwhile to them. If I can get a hard no from either my co-workers or the customers, I'd be more willing to either back off or find another place where I fit better. But as of right now, I see our customers asking for things we can't deliver, and I have a drive to fix it, but I don't think there's a way forward without my co-workers' and superiors' buy in. Thanks for all the ideas! |