[j_baker]

I've seen this story before, and the root cause is almost always the same: too much unpaid technical debt. Certainly I have to grant that you have to take the quick and sloppy solution from time to time. But do it too much and you end up with a team that works its ass off to get very little done.

And the person in charge's response is predictable: "We have to hire more people!". If the business is lucky enough to be successful, you end up with a hundred developers doing the exact same thing since hiring began: working very hard to get very little done.