The Sludge on the Wall
The article discusses the challenges faced by a software development team as they experience increased velocity but declining code quality. Junior developer Priya is shipping more pull requests, while principal engineer Marcus struggles with the burden of reviewing code that often duplicates existing functionality. The piece highlights a disconnect between productivity metrics and the actual health of the codebase, suggesting a systemic issue within teams that is often ignored.
- ▪Priya, a junior developer, shipped five pull requests this week, a significant increase from her previous performance.
- ▪Principal engineer Marcus has not merged anything in eleven days and is overwhelmed by the quality of code being submitted.
- ▪The article suggests that while productivity metrics appear positive, the actual quality of the codebase is deteriorating.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
A tense break room visit Priya, a junior on your team, shipped five pull requests this week. Five! Look at her go. Three years ago she’d have shipped one, maybe two, and one of those would have been a typo fix. The velocity dashboard is glowing. The standup is upbeat. Somebody in management is using the word “leverage.” Meanwhile, your principal engineer Marcus hasn’t merged anything in eleven days. He’s been in the review queue. He looks like he’s seen things. You ask him how it’s going and he stares at you for a beat too long before saying “fine.” When you dropped a spoon in the break room yesterday, Marcus jumped so hard he coated the entire room in a thick brown slurry of cold brew and oat milk.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Grox.
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