Management often views software engineers more like machines that spit out code rather than actual engineers who design software. I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve been on where someone up the ladder is unhappy with the time estimate given to complete a feature so they either bring on a contractor or pull a team from another project
Invariably, the additional “help” makes a giant cluster fuck and the people who are actually familiar with the code are now stuck having to scrutinize every PR and fix a ton of defects rather than contributing to feature development. Then the feature takes twice as long to develop as originally estimated. Management scratches their head, shrugs it off, and repeats the same mistake the next time.
I think the main reason is that big companies are full of engineers working outside their area of expertise.
So they’re bad engineers for the given task.
I’m not sure why the author chose this sentence and why you are picking it out. The author provided no evidence of it. Instead, when you read on it seems to be an ownership problem. People rotating in and out for a year on a ten year project. You can be the most competent and skilled worker, if you don’t get the opportunity to become invested in the success of a project, of course you won’t see the project become successful.
Also there is this far too common thing that experts in one field suddenly think they are experts in everything. I saw some of the most absurd takes from engineers, how this person can be so smart and so dumb at the same time? I think they get hyper confident in their own “gut feeling” which in their field is supported by years of experience and all the knowledge in the world but in other fields it is just their anecdotal experience and bias.
