> We don’t really have any software engineering leaders these days. It would be nice if one stood up and said “stop being awful. Let’s be professionals and earn our money.”
I assume you realize that you don't get very far in many companies when you do that. I'm not humble-bragging, but I used to say just this over past 10-15 years even when in senior/leadership positions, and it ended up giving me a reputation of "oh, gedy is difficult", and you get sidelined by more "helpful" junior devs and managers who are willing to sling shit over the wall to please product. It's really not worth it.
It’s a matter of getting a critical mass of people who do that. In other words, changing the general culture. I’m lucky to work at a company that more or less has that culture.
Yeah I’ve found this is largely cultural, and it needs to come from the top.
The best orgs have a gnarly, time-wisened engineer in a VP role who somehow is also a good people person, and pushes both up and down engineering quality above all else. It’s a very very rare combination.
I assume you realize that you don't get very far in many companies when you do that. I'm not humble-bragging, but I used to say just this over past 10-15 years even when in senior/leadership positions, and it ended up giving me a reputation of "oh, gedy is difficult", and you get sidelined by more "helpful" junior devs and managers who are willing to sling shit over the wall to please product. It's really not worth it.