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Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

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Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#401

Post by philjohn »

As others have said, approaching this with the mindset of "this all needs to be rewritten!" is counter productive, and will set you up on collision course with leadership.

I inherited something similar 12 years ago, also cobbled together PHP, also no separation of code and rendering - making any sort of progress was painful.

As others have said there are a myriad of ways to extend code like this, encapsulating the old with a better facade. Splitting some pieces off - but it needs to be approached as a piecemeal project that takes a decent amount of time, but can be done in parallel with shipping new features.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#402

Post by grayclhn »

Some of the things you listed are bad practices, some are bad outcomes. Change the bad practices (no version control, no beta environment, etc) and use them to prioritize and change the bad outcomes over time.

At least half of the stuff you listed will probably never change. Congrats! Being the senior person means becoming comfortable with people making objectively worse decisions than you would, and putting the structure and architecture in place so that it still works anyway. As a bonus, most of those “objectively worse” decisions can be really good and better suited for the team than your decisions would have been ;).

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#403

Post by spyremeown »

simonw wrote: post #95

Here's a way to introduce version control without having to stop everyone and teach them how to use it first: 1. Commit the entire production codebase to git and push it to a host (GitHub would be easiest here) 2. Set up a cron that runs once every ten minutes and commits ALL changes (with a dummy commit message) and pushes the result Now you have a repo that's capturing changes. If someone messes up you have a chanc…

That git scraping technique is amazing! This is what a proper hack looks like. Super neat.

I'm immediately searching for public maps etc to apply this on.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#404

Post by vermasque »

hrbf wrote: post #331
skrebbel wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with this, but I think it misses a key step: As the team’s manager, it’s your job to get buy-in from the executives to gradually fix the mess. You don’t need to tell the team exactly how to fix it, but you gotta get buy-in for space to fix it. One approach is just to say “every Friday goes to adding tests!” (And then when there’s some reasonable test coverage, make fridays go to refactoring that are eas…

Before anything else, getting buy-in for any kind of major change from the execs is key. Explain the situation and the effects. Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures. Push back hard every time this commitment gets sabotaged because something is supposedly on fire. Get a guaranteed budget for external trainings and workshops, again in writing. Then talk to the team. If you cannot get those comm…

"Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures"

It is possible that the executives won't take it well to all of the formality here (writing and signatures). How would you convince them that this is necessary?

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#405

Post by eru »

eru wrote: post #296
fny wrote: post #64

> this code generates more than 20 million dollars a year of revenue From a business perspective, nothing is broken. In fact, they laid a golden goose. > team is 3 people, quite junior. One backend, one front, one iOS/android. Resistance to change is huge. My mistake, they didn't lay a golden goose--they built a money printer. The ROI here is insane. > productivity is abysmal which is understandable. The mess is just…

>> team is 3 people, quite junior. One backend, one front, one iOS/android. Resistance to change is huge. > My mistake, they didn't lay a golden goose--they built a money printer. The ROI here is insane. We can not make that conclusion. Presumably the business still needs salespeople, support, etc.

P.S. I am not saying that ROI is bad, either. Just that we can't say very much either way.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#406

Post by mav88 »

rendall wrote: post #356
blep_ wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why does our tracking pixel return a purple image? Now I'm really curious, is there some exciting non-obvious reason for a tracking pixel to be purple? Was it #FF00FF or more like #6600DD?

This definitely needs an answer. In fact, until OP can give us the right answer, we immediately need even wrong answers! You reading this. Yes, you. Give your best wrong answer below.

Obviously it's because mauve has the most RAM.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#407

Post by ethbr0 »

vermasque wrote: post #404
hrbf wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before anything else, getting buy-in for any kind of major change from the execs is key. Explain the situation and the effects. Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures. Push back hard every time this commitment gets sabotaged because something is supposedly on fire. Get a guaranteed budget for external trainings and workshops, again in writing. Then talk to the team. If you cannot get those comm…

"Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures" It is possible that the executives won't take it well to all of the formality here (writing and signatures). How would you convince them that this is necessary?

Dates and signatures are theatrical overkill.

I've yet to work at a place where meeting minutes, sent out to all attendees post-meeting, aren't sufficient for the same purpose (ass covering & continued adherence to The Plan as originally agreed).

I'm sure signature and date places do exist... but, I'd probably be looking for a new job if I worked at one.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#409

Post by ethbr0 »

ido wrote: post #339
samuellevy wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there's a process. It's something that I've done a bunch of times for a bunch of clients. There's so much low-hanging fruit there that's so easy to fix _right now_. No version control? Good news! `git init` is free! PHPCS/PHP-CS-fixer can normalise a lot, and is generally pretty safe (especially when you have git now). Yeah, it's overwhelming, but OP said that the software is already making millions - you don't…

And also starting by fixing the js/css/html front end is likely the safest, as it wont corrupt any customer data & it will be visible when something breaks. That can probably be the next best candidate to do a major overhaul. I'd also hope that a $20M/year project can afford to hire someone senior in addition to these 3 juniors?

> hope that a $20M/year project can afford to hire someone senior

Never underestimate the ability of management to look a gift horse in the mouth while shooting it in the foot.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#410

Post by atheken »

$20M/yr, 3 devs, "And post COVID, budget is really tight"

WHERE IS THE MONEY, LEBOWSKI?!!?!

Seriously, WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING? I'm all about keeping a tight small team, but where is the money going? Even paying for a manager to help them move in a direction and address business risk would be worth the investment.

If you really have that level of revenue, and only 3 devs, then you need to be looking at the risk of losing one of them.

All the tech debt is irrelevant, your focus should be on mitigating risk due to attrition/burnout/mistakes.

That being said, just getting a sane deployment process would be helpful.

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