[jokoon]

I experienced awful tech debt combined with an hostage taker, meaning a guy who seemingly refrains from giving knowledge about the software or being able to make the project progress, which gives him eternal employment, while hardly helping his colleagues to get out of the situation.

I wonder at what point a refactoring becomes just a waste of time and money compared to a slow rewrite. It becomes difficult to have an adult discussion about the subject, but obviously it's about money and how clients don't have a choice.

https://neilonsoftware.com/difficult-people-on-software-proj...

There are softwares out there that are just waiting to be put out of their misery, until another savior company finally builds a viable replacement.

At some point it becomes a true crisis of faith, "is it realistically possible to get work done at this job, and should I be okay earning money by mopping the rain".

Of course those softwares are out there, but I can imagine young engineers are not always aware of what is out there.

[cadamsdotcom]

That hostage taker needs a new plan because now LLMs can generate code docs.

[lazide]

yeah, subtly wrong ones.

[segmondy]

how to pry software from a hostage taker. give them a bigger project/role with more money on the condition that they must transition it to others.

done.

extra, fire them before they take hostage the new system.