48
Software engineers should be a little bit cynical
(www.seangoedecke.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
48 points (88.7% liked)
Programming
24146 readers
341 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't get what your bridge example is supposed to show, nor what normalizing substandard practice has to do with politics or lack thereof.
Depending on where you look there's plenty of shoddy construction work and cutting corners for cost, big projects are notorious for taking longer and costing more in the end. Construction had more time to develop and be regulated, and has more physical limitations compared to software development. Both, in the end, can be (theoretically) held accountable before court.
Isn't this politics? Why are you saying politics has no place in engineering principles?
Software engineers are much more replaceable than construction engineers/architects, both in-discipline and with less expertise.
I do my part in what I can influence and control, delivering good and sound products, but it's obvious depending on individuality doesn't work across our whole industry.
/edit: The linked article talks about how in-company politics are necessary to coordinate and deliver features. I don't see that addressed here either? How would you deliver - taking the example from the article - Latex in Markdown on GitHub without politics?
Communication ≠ politics.
Communication in engineering should rely on empirical data not personal opinion or vibes.
The post above only has one sentence where they make a unsupported claim that being involved in politics was necessary to have completed the feature.
The bridge example is to show that personal opinion has no place in projects and that workers should not capitulate to their superiors when they determine unsafe situations are occuring. The "shoddy bolt my boss designed" would be a stand in for whatever crummy practice people are being political about in a software project. From a shitty tech stack to bad project management practices.
Ego and politics is the death of a project.
Except, how do you convince all the other engineers the tech stack is both shitty and that switching off is worth the switching costs? That your data is empirical and also not the "lies, damned lies and statistics" thing where you cherry pick data in your favor so you can look empirical when you are actually just going off your own vibes and ego? Even if your intentions are pure, others might not think so (whether because they have ulterior motives of their own or not).
Unfortunately, that is politics.
That's just miss representing the data for political reasons. Again it's just politics which has no place in engineering
I think as long as there are 2 people on earth who do not have perfect trust in each other, there will be politics.
If you are cherry picking data it's not empirical.