[michaelochurch]

Perhaps 10% of managers and executives are talented and worth a damn. The other 90% are really good at playing politics and externalizing costs. Technical debt is a great way to externalize costs, because the ones who suffer are usually late-coming maintenance engineers (who tend to be juniors, with no credibility).

Middle management (MacLeod Clueless) used to be the bilge pump system of the company. It cleaned up messes made above by self-dealing executives (MacLeod Sociopaths) and from below by checked-out subordinates (MacLeod Losers). Now, that function is being pushed increasingly to tech. We're what self-dealing HR thugs and narcissistic executives externalize their costs into.