- just think: overemphasis on thinking results in an environment with many incompetent and unprofessional leaders and engineers who can neither PRODUCE clean code nor DELIVER good products. The company prefers the obedient employees to the technically capable ones and elect the former to be leaders.
- no scapegoating: the distribution of responsibility is deliberately blurred, such that those who are truly to be blamed for buggy code, wrong technical decisions and unstable architecture can hide themselves behind their scapegoats.
- breakthrough: many of the breakthroughs just break through the obstacles made within the company, such as unsuitable technical choices and buggy implementations. Highly usable and widely accepted libraries, tools and frameworks are out there, yet the engineering team chose to build our own.
- contingency plan: do we have a contingency plan in the midst of financial struggles?
- human skills: the so-called leaders do not represent or fight for the welfare of his/her subordinates. Often they stand with their leaders and squeeze their subordinates together.
- boss-driven over product-oriented: implementation, troubleshooting and decision-making are driven by bosses' demands, rather than being rooted in facts or product oriented. Development may change course anytime as long as some big bosses want it that way, despite the fact that it breaks development roadmap or apparently violates engineering practices.
- process over engineering: overly complicated processes are made to restrict technical discussion and decisions and writing, submitting and releasing code, which is iconic Japanese Ho-Ren-So culture and greatly endorsed by higher managers. Managers block developers from submitting code, thinking it is able to stabilize the build and improve the quality of products.
- firefighting over troubleshooting: too many engineers are mobilised for putting off sparks instead of solving the root problem. Too many temporary fixes have been made permanent. Firefighters are rewarded and admired as heroes while those who prevent the fire from the very beginning are often neglected.
