Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

> You shouldn’t ignore a problem when you’re in a position to help.

is incompatible with

> not put emotional investment into it

I'll only help because I care (maybe it's the person, the larger goal, etc). To me, everything behind the experience that I call "care" is an emotional one. If I don't care, then that means it doesn't matter to me, which literally means there's no emotional response/motivation to do it. Is this odd?

The engineers' role should mostly be as technical advisors, i.e. calling out bad projects for technical reasons (UX, architecture, etc.) But even the seniormost engineers do not have the corporate standing, let alone political cachet, to call out or fix political issues (empire building, infighting between orgs, etc.) They can and should point out these conflicts to leadership (very diplomatically, of course) but should bear no responsibility for the outcomes.

However, as an engineer you should ABSOLUTELY be aware of these dynamics because they will impact your career. Like when the project is canceled with no impact delivered.

The example given of the latent turf war between the product and platform teams might have been avoided via a very clear mandate from senior leadership about who owns what exactly. This would probably have involved some horse-trading about what the org giving up its turf gets in return. (BTW if you've ever wondered "Why so many re-orgs" this is why.) That this didn't happen is a failure on the execs' part.

As an aside, I know this happens in every large company, but somehow it appears to be a lot more common at Google? Or at least Googlers are more open about it. E.g. I observed something similar on that recent post about lessions from Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488819

This also applies to the capacity of the industry to generate bad (and evil) ideas.

Now that we're one of the biggest-money fields, there is no end of people thinking/behaving badly.

You'll wear yourself out, calling out all of it.

For example, I fled cryptocurrency entirely when it got overrun with bad faith. But I don't intend to flee AI, and so will have to ration the criticism I have for abuses there.

> The nuclear option is [...]

BTW, be careful in what context you use this idiom. It doesn't always translate well outside the US. (I realized this as soon as the words came out of my mouth, under perhaps the worst possible circumstances.)

If you’re constantly nitpicking and expressing concerns, you become “that person” who’s constantly negative about other people’s ideas. After a while people tune out; they already know that you’ll find “problems.” We all know these people. No one really likes working with them. Thus they’re _not effective_ at what they’re trying to do.

Ultimately you mostly get credit for shipping things that work, and only rarely for preventing the mistakes of other people.

At its core, what the blog post is saying is: keep your powder dry for when it matters. Not every problem is going to make the company insolvent. Not every concern will prove correct. Pick your battles strategically.

It’s good advice no matter the size or nature of the org.