[pluto_modadic]

My (limited) understanding supporting developers for two years is that product does not take no for an answer, and controls everything from budget to sprints, and can insist on whatever they like, whenever they like. So... I'm going to take your comment as a lovely fantasy like spherical cows. Refactors are a joke that never gets off the ground, after a decade.

[sethammons]

In the healthy orgs I have worked in, it is a give and take relationship between product and engineering. Engineering should absolutely push back on some things and needs to also push for engineering specific projects. No spherical cows, just adults talking about needs and priorities.

The current place I am at has a history of eng doing anything product wants and not saying no or "yes and." As a result, the eng side is a mess, builds are slow, service and data boundaries are muddled, and shipping working software continues to slow. Incidents are rising and customers are starting to churn and larger customers are harder to sign.

As part of eng leadership, my role is helping teams learn what a healthy product and eng relationship looks like, which includes pushing back and gaining alignment on the need for eng focused projects.

[ElevenLathe]

So you will diligently improve the relationship and get things cleaned up, maybe even get credit for it, but the incentive for the next person in your post will be to cash out that built-up equity by saying "yes" to everything again and then getting promoted for their amazing velocity, nevermind that the code is now goulash again. I guess this is the cycle of basically every organization in human history.