[ttldr]

> Sometimes being the voice for change, sometimes being the voice for not change. Always weighing up trade offs, always listening.

[emphasis mine]

i think she makes a really good point here: one that's often overlooked by the "improve"-everything-all-the-time culture that a lot of contemporary tech inveighs.

it's easy to advocate solipsistically for an alternate solution that you came up with. it's harder to objectively weigh the merits of extant design decision and admit that your predecessor made an optimal (or more-optimal-than-you-can-muster) choice and defend it. iconoclasts may occasionally create great things independently (perhaps if they're a Linus Torvalds or a Margaret Hamilton), but the meat and potatoes of building functional and robust software is building well on solid foundations, specifically by respecting those foundations when they're sound.