Technical problems with non-technical solutions

2023-07-21 • 239 words • ~1 min read ⏲

Sometimes engineers have a tendency to solve problems with people by solely technical measures. Everything to avoid an unpleasant conversation. Somebody directly pushed to trunk instead of going through a code process: let's revoke right to push for all devs (instead of talking about processes with a single person). Test coverage could be better? The cop-out solution is to make the build fail under a certain percentage. A prime example of Goodhart's law in action: mindlessly chasing numbers, because that is what you can do with tools. Somebody who doesn't really knows how or what to test just writes test cases without assertions. Essentially worthless, but statistics look good, pat ourself on the back for good coverage. Anything to avoid having to sit together and teach testing strategies.

It is also somehow true on a greater scale of things. Currently Google is attacking the open web with a proposed API that will serve to stifle browser competition and lock out users who don't like to be surveilled by ad-tech. And the best defense I can currently think of is also not technical, but regulatory politics (as this also constitutes a crass violation of GDPR). I know, they ditched "Don't be evil" as motto years ago, but it is astonishing how far they want to go to own your eyeballs in order to extract ad revenue.