*I've worked on teams where multiple engineers argued about the "right" way to build something. I remember thinking that they had biases based on past experiences and assumptions about what mattered. It usually took an outsider to proactively remind them what actually mattered to the business case.*

Gosh I am so tired with that one - someone had a case that burned them in some previous project and now his life mission is to prevent that from happening ever again, and there would be no argument they will take.

Then you get like up to 10 engineers on typical team and team rotation and you end up with all kinds of "we have to do it right because we had to pull all nighter once, 5 years ago" baked in the system.

Not fun part is a lot of business/management people "expect" having perfect solution right away - there are some reasonable ones that understand you need some iteration.

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mrheosuper 2 days ago | parent [-]

>someone had a case that burned them in some previous project and now his life mission is to prevent that from happening ever again

Isn't that what makes them senior ? If you dont want that behaviour, just hire a bunch of fresh grad.

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lukan 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, extrapolating from one bad experience to universal approach does not make anyone senior.

There are situations where it applies and situation where it doesn't. Having the experience to see what applies in this new context is what senior (usually) means.

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sanderjd 2 days ago | parent [-]

The people I admire most talk a lot more about "risk" than about "right vs. wrong". You can do that thing that caused that all-nighter 5 years ago, it isn't "wrong", but it is risky, and the person who pulled that all-nighter has useful information about that risk. It often makes sense to accept risks, but it's always good to be aware that you're doing so.

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yurishimo 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's also important to consider the developers risk tolerance as well. It's all fine and dandy that the project manager is okay with the risk but what if none of the developers are? Or one senior dev is okay with it but the 3 who actually work the on-call queue are not?

I don't get paid extra for after hours incidents (usually we just trade time), so it's well within my purview on when to take on extra risk. Obviously, this is not ideal, but I don't make the on-call rules and my ability to change them is not a factor.

	▲	sanderjd 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think of this as a project manager's role, but an engineering manager's role. The engineers on the team (especially the senior engineers) should be identifying the risks, and the engineering managers should be deciding whether they are tolerable. That includes risks like "the oncall is awful and morale collapses and everyone quits". It's certainly the case that there are managers who handle those risks poorly, but that's just bad management.

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ozim 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nope, not realizing something doesn't apply and not being able to take in arguments is cargo culting not being a senior.