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theptiptoday at 3:49 PM1 replyview on HN

It takes guts to say “this 1 month feature would be done in a couple days by a competent competitor using modern technology and techniques”, and the legendary “I reimplemented it in <framework> over the weekend” is often not well received.

But - sometimes drastic measures and hurt feeling are needed to break out of a bad attractor. Just be sure you’re OK with leaving the company/org if your play does not succeed.

And know that as the OP describes, it’s a lot about politics. If you convince management that there is a problem, you have severely undermined your technical leadership. Game out how that could unfold! In a small company maybe you can be the new TL, but probably don’t try to unseat the founder/CTO. In a big company you are unlikely to overturn many layers above you of technical leadership.


Replies

nine_ktoday at 4:26 PM

> hurt feeling

This is why I incessantly preach to my coworkers: "you are not your job". Do not attach to it emotionally, it's not your child, it's a contraption to solve a puzzle. It should be easy and relieving to scrap it in favor of a better contraption, or of not having to solve the problem at all.

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