[herghost]

This is crushingly pertinent for my career at the moment. I've come from an organisation that I might describe as "architecture-led" into an organisation that is perhaps more "engineering-led". I prefer to plan and solve problems before they become crises. I don't know whether my boss like reacting to crises or we're just working through a really tough 12 months but we seem to _always_ be in a crisis. Problems are almost always solved in the "simplest" way - which makes a lot of sense from an engineering point of view - why do more than you need to? - but this often, and openly, means not actually solving the problem and just solving enough of it to shave off the spiky bits that are causing the "crisis".

There's very much a firefighting culture. That is, after all, how people earn medals. And whilst I've heard the adage that rewarding firefighting results in arsonists, I don't think it's quite that.

It's more than rewarding firefighting results in people who spot small fires but tolerate them to the point that other people notice - and then they don their helmet and rush in to fix it.

No one is maliciously lighting things on fire - but they won't put out the fires they find unless someone is watching.

[danjc]

If your company is experiencing high growth, what you're experiencing might be not only normal but healthy.

[herghost]

Thank you. That’s a really interesting point.