Hacker News Reader

Comment by whoknowsidont | Hacker News Reader

But that has to do with the capabilities of the executives involved, it doesn't make it impossible. Just like in your example, there are many, many developers that can perfectly understand large functions or code bases without issue.

If you have such a code base and you hire people that are not equipped, either through inexperience or capability, of managing that code base that is a resourcing issue.

If your executives cannot understand and control the organization they are tasked with controlling and cultivating, then they should be fired.

Which is basically what this dude is getting at.

View on HN

Except large code bases do the same. They regularly die when their ability to be understood drops too low. Even with well organized code, they are pushed to add features until they aren't understood at the deepest level. Once you hit millions of lines of code, even when you spend decades in that code base, you still forget changes you made even if you have an overarching picture. That's ignoring other people working on it all the time. The understanding gets reduced to contracts, types, and interfaces.

And most importantly, humans are more complicated than code. With enough time and knowledge, I can accurately tell you what any piece of code does on a single expression or statement. Humans regularly do things they don't even know for purposes they don't understand.

I agree with you, but none of this makes it impossible. It just makes it a resourcing/hiring issue.

The same thing regularly happens with smaller companies or code bases. The size exacerbates the issue, but it's not the cause of it.

Which is largely this OP's point regarding the subject of calling out culture rot and a particular executive.

Do you have any resources to learn this. How to untangle the situation. What would happen if the resources indeed isn’t the problem to tackle, rather its complexity that is hard to untangle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com