[angarg12]

Fun analogy, but let's look at the Martial Artist environment

> There are basic ground rules (clear requirements) which the opponents (problems) are NOT allowed to break. eg: below the belt punches, (changing priorities every week) etc.

Who does get to work in such an environment? I can only think of:

* Academia

* Artificial environments (e.g. leetcode, coding competitions)

* MAYBE very mature products in established companies

For the vast majority of us changing requirements, unknown unknowns and technology shifts are our daily bread. Big, unchanging upfront design doesn't work, and we've known this for several decades now.

[ZephyrBlu]

This is a very common environment in large companies.

If you're working on an existing service and not building new features/functionality (E.g. you're improving scaling or optimizing performance like he mentions) the problem space is usually pretty well defined and you can mostly just put your head down and work.