Hacker News Reader

Companies genuinely don't want good code. Individual teams just get measured by how many things they push around. An employee warning that something might not work very well is going to get reprimanded as "down in the weeds" or "too detail oriented," etc. I didn't understand this for a while, but internal actors inside of companies really just want to claim success.

View on HN

> Companies genuinely don't want good code.

I might be more charitable. I'd say something like "Companies genuinely want good code but weigh the benefits of good code (future flexibility, lower maintenance costs) against the costs (delayed deployment, fewer features)."

Each company gets to make the tradeoffs they feel are appropriate. It's on technical people to explain why and risks, just like lawyers do for their area of expertise.

They don't care about good code, but they do pay people a lot of money to care about good code. If the people you hired didn't care, our software quality would be worse than it is. And since people are caring less in the face of AI, it is getting worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com