alt Hacker News> You ought to know that crushing JIRA tickets is rarely a path to promotion (at least above mid-level), that glue work can be a trap, that you will be judged on the results of your projects, and therefore getting good at shipping projects is the path to career success.
Notice that the author didn't write "getting good at delivering value." They wrote "getting good at shipping projects" because
> Shipping is a social construct within a company.
Delivering solid software that helps people get work done is a platonic ideal. Unfortunately there are many companies that value whipping stuff out the door more highly. As corny as this sounds the iron triangle ("good, fast, cheap - pick two") is a thing for a reason. Crapping something out as quickly as possible and leaving others to deal with the fallout of a bad data model and chaotic on-call isn't something to be rewarded but it's how many companies seem to work.
Replies
> Crapping something out as quickly as possible and leaving somebody else to deal with the fallout of a bad data model and violent on-call isn't something to be rewarded IMO.
Sadly you've described precisely the optimal engineering strategy for promotion at my FAANG
> Crapping something out as quickly as possible…
I suppose that makes AI Taco Bell for companies.
> Crapping something out as quickly as possible and leaving others to deal with the fallout of a bad data model and chaotic on-call isn't something to be rewarded but it's how many companies seem to work.
Engineers who do this leave nothing but ashes in their wake even if they keep getting promoted for it.
>Shipping is a social construct within a company.
Thanks for flagging this, this was an epiphany for me today, so for anyone else struck by it I'm linking directly to the article it's from (same author, and linked from the article in the context the parent mentions, just not linked directly in their post above):
"How I ship projects at big tech companies" https://www.seangoedecke.com/how-to-ship/
Also the HN comments on it from when it was originally posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42111031