Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

> I can’t imagine holding a job where I had to do work that I expect will fail. Sounds absolutely depressing. What keeps you motivated?

The paycheck. I had never expected work to NOT be depressing by definition, though. The only reason I'm working on what my employee wants me to is because I can't afford to live otherwise. They'll get the minimal effort needed for me to not get fired, but not a single minute more.

I don't think it is just big companies. I worked for startups and small companies; when there are a number of managers/VP's involved there is trouble. Bad ideas persist because managers/leaders do not throw stones at each other. As an engineer I tend to just do what makes sense then justify it afterwards; I have trouble with managers who are just administrators with no relevant technical background.

Open source project maintenance follows a similar model, but with a different set of stakes.

The "price tag" of voicing concerns is lower, yet raise them too often and you still earn a reputation as obstructionist. Meanwhile, the cost of accepting problematic changes can be higher—you may end up maintaining that code long after changing jobs. And unlike corporate politics, the "influence bank account" is public: communications are archived indefinitely.

There is a fascinating shift in how "withdrawals" are calculated: In a corporate hierarchy, the cost of dissent feels exponential: something like `cost = exp(their_level - your_level)`. Say, as a Google L3/L4/L5 engineer, opposing L6-L8 feels like trying to make a massive withdrawal with a tiny balance. In contrast, in OSS the cost almost stays constant despite the corporate level difference.

This created a paradox for me: leaving Google means less time for LLVM maintenance, but it also lets me voice objections more freely, without the shadow of internal performance ratings or hierarchical friction.

That said, I know I've been "withdrawing" heavily, including from a lot of previous colleagues. In a recent LLVM Project Council meeting:

> There is a pattern of behavior here of blocking contributions due to concerns about maintenance cost and design simplicity.

(I appreciate the transparency of making these meetings public, by the way.)

I had to respond at https://discourse.llvm.org/t/llvm-project-council-meeting-no...

This article resonates with me a lot, but as a senior engineer I would not share it in a big team setting. Even though it's correct, it's too cynical for big team morale. I think it would be worth sharing with peers or managers when discussing whether and how to intervene on a bad project.