Perfectionism is sort of polarizing, and a lot of product manager / CEO types see it as the enemy. In certain contexts it might be, but in others “perfectionism” translates to “building the foundation flawlessly with the downstream dependencies in mind to minimize future tech debt.” Of course, a lot of managers prefer to pretend that tech debt doesn’t exist but that’s just because they don’t think they can pay it off in time before their team gets cut for not producing any value because they were so busy paying off tech debt. That’s why it’s critical to try to minimize it in the first place, which almost never happens because engineers are held to tight launch deadlines and sacrifices are made in the process. And this is not just a problem at startups, if anything it’s a bigger problem in BigTech™ where I have the privilege of cleaning up after messes that were made over a decade ago.
“Perfectionism is sort of polarizing, and a lot of product manager / CEO types see it as the enemy.”
And it definitely shows. In the software world low quality is almost a given now. CEOs rush things out so they can start making money as soon as possible only for the product to be unstable and hated by the users it was forced upon.
Recall just got Recalled probably because Nadella said “we’ll iterate.”
Would DOOM be the same game if Carmack et al were told to rush things, cut corners, and iterate?
I see programming as an art, and art takes time. It doesn’t conform to deadlines and sprints.
From what I’ve heard it works differently in Japan. They take their time to get things right the first time.
Personally I think the short term thinking pervading the American corporate world is nothing short of delusional. I’ve heard similar things about Japan, their woodworking is world class in its precision and simplistic brilliance.
