this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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This why any good engineer would bake it into their estimates when working around the area. I think Martin Fowler covers this in Refactoring. Eiher that or it was Kent Beck in TDD. Both books complement each other really well.
A good civil engineer doesn't ask a Project Manager if they can add in structural supports. A good software engineer shouldn't ask to build things right.
"Before we build x, we need to adapt the foundations by resolving x problem. If we don't get this right, it'll increase the chances of bugs surfacing in production and would make our team look like a joke."
Just build and deploy it! We have the shareholders to think of!
This person has high level management energy
Me? No. But I've met plenty of those types.
"Are you willing to own the risk? If so, what will it look like? Can you budget additional time for addressing these bugs, and draft contingency plans?"
"You're overthinking it" - real response from my management
*Sticks fingers in ears* Can't hear you!
"I only know 1 (credible) way to build it. I'll take x days. I'll go right ahead with that."
We need it yesterday! Just get it done!
"Why are we only learning about this now? How long has this requirement been known? I think we need to look into the process that work comes into the team otherwise, if we don't learn, we are going to take the website down and cost the company thousands/millions. It's worth working with the business to get a batter understanding of upcoming requirements so we know what's going to be needed in a months time". There is a reason retros exist. Oh, and you have to be good at teasing out real deadlines vs arbitrary deadlines made up with no justifiable reason.
"You ask me how long it'll take, and it's 3 days. You probably need to manage expectations on this. Maybe let them know the risks of x, y and z and why it will take this long".
Bad PO: "So it will only increase the chance of bugs if we don't do it? There won't necessarily be any. So we can skip it and just put the feature in."
I hope you have a good PO who is on the same page as you, but to a bad PO, it still sounds optional.
A civil engineer doesn't say "If we don't put supports there's a chance the ceiling will fall in and people may die," because history has shown there are plenty of unscrupulous project managers who are quite willing to take construction risks, even with people's lives. As a result of this there are now plenty of laws in construction, and a civil engineer has a convenient fallback of saying "If we don't put supports it won't pass inspection, and we won't get paid."
Everyone wants to get paid.
In software we don't have many laws we can fall back on to justify our work, but we can still treat our tech debt and refactoring as if it's equally mandatory.
"To add feature x, we need to resolve problem y. The feature can't be added until we've completed this prerequisite."
My current boss: so I sold this at least 10% below budget and we have to make it work.
Fuck that guy!
Reality is already fucking him sideways but he keeps escaping reality. He's like a financial Houdini.
The big difference is a civil/structural engineer has to individually certify a plan sets and take legal responsibility for it. The project manager can't override them.
They can fire them and hire another engineer, but even if they found someone to stamp bad plans for a fee, the original engineer could report the new engineer and have their credentials yanked.
We don't have that in software engineering. And outside of critical software we don't need it. When the audio fucks up in Teams and you have to leave and re-enter the meeting, people don't die.
I had a co-worker who was writing remote control software for a baseball-throwing machine. Not exactly "critical software" but he ended up firing a 125 mph knuckleball a foot above a 10-year-old kid's head.
Fuck Teams. The buggiest, most crash prone mess I've even been forced to use. They keep bolting on new, unnecessary "features" that only selectively work on some of their "supported" platforms.
But what if the audio fucking up in Teams ends up costing a big man the wealth he's entitled to?
Sure, then you get outbid by another contractor who is willing to cut corners.
That's why you get jobs at the consultancy that has to clean up those messes after companies are burnt enough. Most companies that get burnt will feel the reputation damage and go for reputable ones with integrity who respect push back.
Usually you're not selling work on a feature by feature basis. It's usually on huge projects or multi year deals.
Companies don't remember or learn. People come and go and after a software lifecycle everything is forgotten as the top management gets refreshed.
That’s why you should go work at big corporate enterprises. Then you have both job security as well as the ability to spend as much time as necessary on getting things right. And you might even learn to say no to middle management.
Aw do they also hand out unicorns for Xmas?
Some corporations do that, most don't even if they're trying to, because incompetence.
The difference there is that our project manager guy is afraid they're gonna go to prison if they don't let you add those supports and something goes wrong. But for the software dude, building things properly is unfortunately mostly a concern for you and the other software engineers, and mr project manager doesn't have that much of an incentive to let you do that
I find project managers don't want to be responsible for building shit that is flaky on prod. Either the consultancy reputation or team reputation becomes mud and their promotion opportunities vanish.
Yes that is probably the case for project managers that are actually held accountable
Then if you trust your team, have dev meetings and don't give alternatives. Make it clear there is one way to do it and it'll take x days long.
A good project manager understands technical debt.
Edit: moderately good
and the response will invariably be: “Is there a way we can just ship feature x now and fix up the other stuff after?”
Just increase your time estimate,
calculate in the time needed to refactor,
but don't tell them you're gonna refactor.
Works out most of the time.
Only when they ask why the estimate is so long, then you explain your reasoning behind it, and then they might reply with your statement and block your refactoring idea.
However, getting time to refactor most of the time, is aleady way better then never being allowed to do so.
I have more than 20 years experience. I’ve never once not gotten the “can we do it without refactoring?” question. Bad managers? Not necessarily, the pressure always comes from above. Short term thinking always wins out in the for profit private sector.
In my case those almost never pass. Maybe you're the only one exclusively working on that system...? When you're one of a number of contractors competing to do something in software that cannot be regulated, you're basically screwed.
Then you don't give another option and only give estimates for doing it correctly.
If you're saying "I could hack it in for you this way", you're a cowboy dev.
LOL! OK sure.
How can they block? Usually they cannot code so cannot do it themselves. Working in a place that micromanages you this badly must by soul destroying and degrading. Job sites are a good option.
By not accepting your time estimate,
requesting your reasoning why it takes that long, you explaining you calculated time in for refactoring, then rejecting your idea and granting you only time to implement the new thing, without granting time for refactoring.
And dw, my project manager is a pretty chill friend and fellow senior developer, who is reasonable and helps me with calculating in time for refactoring whenever possible/nessecary.
It's only higher up, CEOs/management, who seek to cut corners, with rocks for brains, who don't see that in the long run such practices are bad for business.
Which sadly is the case for most IT businesses. But at least in my workplace the project manager is not a rat & on the side of the developers.
That ain't pretty. In the UK, there is much more trust and less micromanagement, though it's important devs learn to be assertive, communicate well and don't give too much info to be hanged with. The way you communicate can determine his much time you free for yourself. A baker never asks of they can use flour and egg or negotiate on cook time.
Context is important though and if folk find themselves in the cheapest price consultancy, they probably need to find their way out for their own self-respect and mental health. When you find your way into an org that wants to build quality stuff, it's much happier for them.
Depends where you work.
If you're good and they respect you , you'll get away with "no" or, "I'll build it, but if it goes wrong, I'm not fixing this evening and weekends". Safest option is "in all honesty, I cannot see another credible option, no" and if you're fed up of the follow up, drop the word credible.