To put some perspective into what our code looks like, there are very few tests (which may or may not pass), no formatter or linter for most of the code, no pipelines to block PRs, no gates whatsoever on PRs, and the code is somewhat typed sometimes (the Python, anyway). Our infrastructure was created ad-hoc, it’s not reproducible, there’s only one environment shared between dev and prod, etc.

I’ve been in multiple meetings with coworkers and my manager talking about how it is embarassing that this is what we’re shipping. For context, I haven’t been on this project for very long, but multiple projects we’re working on are like this.

Two years ago, this would have been unacceptable. Our team has worked on and shipped products used by millions of people. Today the management is just chasing the hype, and we can barely get one customer to stay with us.

The issue lies with the priorities from the top down. They want new stuff. They don’t care if it works, how maintainable it is, or even what the cost is. All they care about is “AI this” and “look at our velocity” and so on. Nobody cares if they’re shipping something that works, or even shipping the right thing.