[citizenpaul]

>Not really my experience in teams that create inconsistent, undocumented codebases... but you might get 1 or 2 converts.

This has also been my experience. Usually there is a "Top" sticky/unhelpful/reticent person. They are not really a director or exec but they often act like it and seem immune from any repercussions from the actual higher ups. This person tends to attract "followers" that know they will keep their jobs if they follow the sticky person for job security. There usually are a few up and coming people that want better that will kinda go along with you for their own skill building benefit but its all very shaky and you can't count on them supporting you if resistance happens.

I've literally had the "I was here before you and will be after" speech from one of the "sticky's" before.

All these HN how to do better write ups seem to universally ignore the issues of power and politics dynamics and give "in a vacuum" advice. Recognizing a rock and a hard place and saving your sanity by not caring is a perfectly rational decision.

[jimbokun]

Well HN was created as a forum for discussing start up best practices, which is all about disrupting big companies weighed down by internal politics.

[awesome_dude]

The linked article is about dealing with legacy codebases with millions of lines of code.

The response is accurate - anyone that's had to deal with a legacy code base has had to deal with the creators of said birds nest (who proudly strut around as though the trouble it causes to maintainability makes them "clever").

[hinkley]

There are however some people who think they are sticky but aren’t really. Some but not all of them use Impostor Syndrome to keep their followers in line. You can recruit most easily from people they’ve left twisting in the wind when their suggestions and ideas turned out to not work, but only if you always deal with the poor consequences of your own decisions. People will follow ideas they don’t quite understand if they know they won’t be working alone at 7 pm on a Thursday fixing it.

These sort of people will vote for you publicly. However some lot them will still take the path of least resistance when you aren’t looking.

It was sort of a nasty surprise when I figured out one day that there are people in this industry that will agree with high minded sentiments in public but not lift a finger to get there. I ended up in a group that had two or three of them. And one day due to a requirements process fuckup we had a couple weeks with nothing to do. They just did the Hands Are Tied thing I’d been seeing for over a year (yes we should do X but we have to do Y for reasons) and I saw red. Luckily I was on a conference call instead of sitting in front of them at that moment. But I’m sure they heard the anger lines over the phone.

If the boss doesn’t give you an assignment, you work on tech debt they haven’t previously insisted that you work on. Simple as that. At most places if my boss disappeared, I could keep busy for at least three months without any direction. And keep several other people busy as well. If you don’t know what to work on then I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

[peterldowns]

I tried my best to offer a pragmatic recommendation for dealing with those sorts of people. I'd love to know what you would recommend instead?

[awesome_dude]

IME it's politics, so you need to find someone that the sticky person fears/respects, and get them onboard.

The only other way I have succeeded is to appeal to the sticky person's ego, make them think that it's their idea.

Note: I have also had to deal with

Sticky person: Do it this way

Me: But X

Sticky Person: No, do it the way I have decreed

[...]

Three hours later (literally)

Sticky Person: Do it X way

[citizenpaul]

You are most likely giving the only real answer. However I just say its better to not care. Look how much energy and mental strife you are going through to line someone else's pockets against their will. That only is not even including the actual work just the unnecessary work around the work. Its not worth it. If the tech is this dysfunctional then so is the rest of the organization, you breaking your back to fix one support structure is just masochism.

[awesome_dude]

Heh, unfortunately it's been this way in almost every company I have been in.

I don't think that I have ever been in a company where I haven't had to deal with it - and it's taken me a while to work it out, I've had physical threats and (just this Christmas gone) been punched in the stomach at a work Christmas event by someone upset that I'm able to point out these other ways of doing things.

People are very scared of losing what little power they think that they have.

[billy99k]

This exactly. I worked at a place one time with a terrible code base. They based it on open source and slapped on additions with no style or documentation.

My first day, I couldn't even stand the code base up on my local dev environment, because there were so many hard-coded paths throughout the application, it broke (they were unwilling to fix this or have me fix it).

I tried to accept their way of coding and be part of the team, but it got too much for me. They were staunch SVN supporters. This isn't much of a problem, but we had constant branching problems that Git would have resolved.

As I got assigned work, I noticed I would have to fix more bugs and bad coding, before I could even start the new addition/feature. It was riddled with completely obvious security vulnerabilities that were never fixed. Keep in mind that this was the new product of the entire company with paying customers and real data.

The team lead was also very insecure. I couldn't even nicely mention or suggest fixes in code that he had written. The interesting thing is that he didn't even really have a professional coding background. He went straight from tech support to this job.

I lasted about a year. I got let go due to 'money issues'. Shortly before this, they wanted me to merge my code into my branch with the Jr. developer's code right before my vacation (literally the day before).

I merged it and pushed it up to the repo (as instructed) and the team lead sent me nasty emails throughout my vacation about how various parts of my code 'didn't work'. Not only were these parts the Jrs code, it wasn't ready for production.

The other thing to know about the team lead is that he was extremely passive aggressive and would never give me important project details unless I asked (I'm not talking details, just high-level, what needs to be completed).

We had a call where he told me I 'wasn't a senior developer'. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I needed the job. The company went out of business 2 months later.

I found out their entire business model relied only on Facebook Ads, and they got banned for violating their rules.