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How do you deal with management and tech debt?

Hey all, I want to know how you all deal with management and pushing tech debt work. Here's a little bit of background on my current situation, and I'd love to hear how you'd deal with it.

I've been in the profession for about 8 years and had a high-level job at my last company where I oversaw a huge amount of modernization work (bringing an old Laravel codebase up to PHP 8, putting all sites in Docker images for the new cloud infrastructure etc...).

I recently got a new remote job with a pretty high salary (I swear this is relevant and not a brag) with a company that has an ancient tech stack. During the interview, we talked about modernizing the company's stack and seemed to be quite important to them. I really like the company and the people working there and I've been really welcomed there. I was brought into the role because of my experience with modernizing code and I worked for a competitor before joining this team.

The tech stack here is pretty simple and ancient. It does work, but it causes a lot of issues. They're using a monolithic Apache server for all of the websites we manage which each dev has to set up with virtual hosts. My first main project is working under a senior dev to scope out a brand new Laravel API which is all modern tech, no outdated PHP versions or anything.

I was pretty pumped the past few weeks but today I hit a lot of roadblocks in working with him and kind of want to hear what you guys feel about the situation.

We're building out an API specification and he insisted that we do it in a Google document, which I suggested we look at an OpenAPI specification instead so we didn't have to keep repeating request bodies and responses. He came back and said something along the lines of: "I don't really want to learn YAML because I don't have time, so we'll stick with the document.". My wrists and fingers still ache from having to copy, paste and edit each request and response manually. Google Docs isn't a great solution for generating API specifications.

Then after that, we bootstrapped the main Laravel application. It's the most recent version of Laravel, and I realised that he'd committed the whole vendor folder to the repo and had gone through the .gitignore files in each dependency and removed stuff that would mess with it. I asked why he did it like that, and he said: "we won't be using Composer because our servers don't have it". Our other applications are running on an older version of PHP so I said we'd need a new server anyways, so why don't we do it the way that Laravel suggests with CI/CD pipelines? He comes back and says "We don't use Composer, and that won't change.". He's been pretty cold to me ever since I started.

Thanks for sticking with me, now back to the salary. How should I approach my manager (the Lead Developer) about this without making it seem like I'm tattling on the Senior? The salary is way more than an average Laravel dev and I know I'll feel bad if I say nothing. I also don't want to dull my skills with newer technologies because I'll struggle in my next role when/if I move on. I spent 3/4 years at my last role and then moved onto another role which only lasted 3 months before coming into this role, so I don't really want to change jobs again for a while.

I'd really value your opinions in this as professionals, even if the technology I've mentioned isn't familiar to you! How would you deal with this situation, especially when it comes to management that don't understand the problems that ignoring tech debt can cause?

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  • Thanks for your points, there's some really valuable stuff here.

    I'd say he's in his early 40s, and I try not to be ageist since I've had some outstanding older developers that I've worked with, but I think he's perhaps stuck in his ways a little bit.

    Unfortunately, it's just me and him which are building this new API with no other developer involvement. So it's kind of like a "he said, he said" scenario. Another unfortunate to pile on top of that is that we don't work in Agile sprints (I've worked that for the past 4 years so it's quite a change for me), so I only speak to the other developers once every 1 - 2 weeks. The only daily contact I have is the "Senior" who is in charge of this specific Laravel project.

    I love the idea about sitting with him and talking. At first, he seemed quite cold to me. It warmed up a bit last week but now it's back to cold, so I'm not sure if I just caught him on a good or bad day, or if I'd said something to upset him.

    He was pretty firm about not doing either the OpenAPI or Composer things today, I tried to push a little bit, politely, and just say in the nicest way I could that Google Docs wasn't the best fit for what we needed and that we'd probably be doubling-up on our work in future. He seems very focused on the time the project will take, and it feels like he sees any suggestions as a burden.

    • He is technically higher than me on the job, as a supervisor, so it feels quite difficult to go to him and say: "Well, I think you're wrong.". I know it shouldn't be difficult, but that type of conflict just isn't something that's common to me.

    • @Crunkle_Foreskin yea I notice this behavior very well. It's not placement. In fact, very frustrating.

      Maybe he is very busy, and doing all kind of stuff as the same time. Causing to lose focus and patience.

      Some chit-chat might work.. You also can just ask him DIRECTLY: Do you want to share something with me? (maybe there are other things going on? Maybe even not work related).. Or: Why don't you think my concerns are invalid? And/or: Should I change my communication with you?..

      • I'm from the UK, so that might explain why I'm a bit hesitant to get confrontational. I'm still on my probation period so I don't want to annoy and lose my role.

        I like that, I think it might do some good to level with him and just ask those questions outright. I might see if I can muster up the courage to do that tomorrow morning.

        • @Crunkle_Foreskin I first thought US actually, since they also have a cultural hierarchy. I never worked in the UK, but maybe this same kind of hierarchy exists in UK workforce as well?

          Anyway, I'm from The Netherlands. And often the Dutch are very direct. Ask direct questions. Speak-up. Etc. Of course it also depends on the person, people who are very shy quickly remain silent.

          I understand you are also afraid to lose your job if you are still in your probation period.

          • Company is about 1000 - 3000, with a dev team of about 9.

            The probation period is my main worry. The project hinges a lot on me and him working well together, so I don't want to make that not work, or make it struggle.

            There's usually a pretty solid hierarchy in UK companies, at least from a development side. You have the Junior - Mid-Level - Senior progression. It was the same at my last place (I was actually a Senior on the job role) where you have Juniors under the Mid-Level and Mid-Level under the Senior.

            I always listened to other developers though, I saw the role less as a "I'm the boss" position and just that I have more responsibility for what I'm doing. If I didn't listen to some of the Juniors (who haven't had the time to gain some bad habits :) ), a lot of good things would have been missed.

            • @Crunkle_Foreskin I will point again to my 1.1 bullet. Try to show (eventually) you are not just a junior anymore. In such a way it won't look bad to the senior developer(s). Hearing your story, I don't really think you are junior or mid at all.

              I hear a lot of passion in the profession from you.

          • @Crunkle_Foreskin can I ask how big the company is? Is it like 50 employees..? Or 150? Or 15000?

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