[brudgers]

The big problems for most the world's organizations are not software bugs in corner cases. The business of most the world's organizations is not producing software, even if they have in house development staff.. Good software solves a client's actual problems. That is entirely orthogonal to best engineering practices.

There is lots of great advice on quitting here. For completeness I'm suggesting what staying another year might teach:

1. The listening skills necessary for figuring out what matters to other people.

2. Interpreting non-technical language and translating it a technical solution.

3. Asking good questions to find unarticulated constraints.

4. The understanding that every business is a sausage factory (even software businesses). Get close enough and there's no avoiding seeing what goes into the sausage.

I'm not suggesting staying at a job you hate. I'm not suggesting working with mediocrity. On the other hand, it's no accident that many software badasses come out of consulting - and an inhouse development team is akin to an inhouse consultant: paid to solve problems not make products or problems.

Good luck.

[prettyrandom100]

What if the bug was severe security bugs, several of them which definitely helped make the software better ? I've been a firm believer that there are "million dollar bugs" that could destroy the product completely, shouldn't those be considered big problems for world's organizations ? I think I might have already learned these things you pointed out in the 1 year I spent, does adding one more year really help much ?

[brudgers]

Let's say there's a 1% chance of a $1,000,000 bug. Insuring against it costs $12,000/year (expected payout * 1.2).

It takes 40 hours @ $100/hour * 2.0 overhead to fix it = $8000: And the expected net value of 40 hours of developer work is $4000. This makes fixing the bug versus insuring against it a wash.

Assessing risk and evaluating alternatives is the basis for rational business decision making. Throw in a 1% chance that the bug fix produces a $100 regression bug, and the business case is for insurance.

Again there's nothing wrong with quitting a job you hate. But it is probably a mistake to assume that the entire operation is staffed by incompetents. People have different perspectives based on their job responsibility.

Good luck.

[prettyrandom100]

I never said anything about the competence of the staff, it's just the politics. Also I'm not talking about insuring against the bug, but meriting a bug (or any work) based on the difficulty/impact.