> My suspicion is that a lot of this comes down to budget pressure causing management to constantly discourage efforts by technical teams to invest time in the quality of their systems rather than push out more features.
This is only partly true. It is true that management sometimes faces budget pressure. But the real skill lies in what they do next. They could - easily - come up with a strategy of feature delivery, and communicate it clearly. Ask engineers to pause red tape, be scrappy for the next few quarters, talk to dependent teams to make certain flows easier. Explicitly use their authority to set the rules aligned with leadership.
But this is not what they do. The average management simply pushes indirectly, via 1:1s or individual blaming.
> After the manager declines to invest in engineering quality a few times, they have sent a clear message that quality and reliability are secondary to the desire to get things our the door. Then they blame the staff for their mistake.
This is only partly true. It is true that management sometimes faces budget pressure. But the real skill lies in what they do next. They could - easily - come up with a strategy of feature delivery, and communicate it clearly. Ask engineers to pause red tape, be scrappy for the next few quarters, talk to dependent teams to make certain flows easier. Explicitly use their authority to set the rules aligned with leadership.
But this is not what they do. The average management simply pushes indirectly, via 1:1s or individual blaming.
> After the manager declines to invest in engineering quality a few times, they have sent a clear message that quality and reliability are secondary to the desire to get things our the door. Then they blame the staff for their mistake.
Truth.