FYI: it’s typically management who cuts corners, whether in hiring or process. I’ve met a few exceptions but most devs take pride in their work.
Tips:
- if you’re experienced and management insists on cluegy solutions, either refuse or leave a trail of tickets and comments re: technical debt for the next dev.
- If you’re not experienced, or if you feel out of your depth and have no senior to turn to, know that you will with time and just try do your best.
- In either case, experienced devs will understand the situation and won’t judge you.
- Also in either case, fire the client.
I was on the receiving end, except the roles are reversed. Dude retired and left an undocumented spaghetti mess.
But! He worked on a code base by himself for two years, on a subject matter he knew nothing about, in a language he didn’t know, and kept asking management for help. I don’t blame him a single bit, not the tiniest iota. 200% management fault, once for having him do that and once again for ignoring his cries for help.
It feels like you’re describing one of my previous jobs
If {Kolanaki != Employed_Here} then {exit()};Making myself unfirable. 😎

Goddamn that’s a great quote
I mean, i asked them to allocate time for me to write documentation and they didnt reply to those emails. Its not unmaintainable, but its still not very well documented apart from some comments on the more complex or intransparent sections of the code.
Oh, were you going to give me a raise that’s more than inflation? No? More than 6 days off a year? Oh, no? Match a 401k? …no. Yeah, good luck with the clusterfuck. The little energy I had beyond just making this function went into purposely obfuscating everything. Just give it to your AI, that’ll sort it out.




