Technical debt only burdens engineers, while managers won't feel the pain because they don't even know (or don't care), so refactoring really needs to be done carefully.
In the real workplace of a tech company, engineers are indeed not hired solely to write code. The author, through their own experience and that of former colleagues, points out that a company's reliance on specific technologies or individual employees is usually not as critical as commonly perceived. The author mentions a colleague who was the company's only .Net developer, responsible for the operation of many profit-making websites; however, after he resigned due to dissatisfaction with a new policy, although his absence caused problems in the short term, the company quickly replaced his contributions with other technologies and gradually abandoned the old .Net architecture. The author's experience is similar; the custom JavaScript tools, cross-browser testing methods, and exclusive A/B testing suite they developed were easily replaced by third-party tools or more widely used market tools.
The author observes that the reason why technical personnel and their work are so easily replaceable lies in the fact that company managers are concerned not with specific technologies or code itself, but with the launch, optimization, and demonstration of products and features. He once spent a lot of effort fixing system errors and performance issues but didn't receive the recognition he deserved; however, when he created visually appealing PowerPoint proposals (such as subscription models or architectural design concepts) that were easier to present to senior management, they often received more praise, even if they never actually entered the coding phase. From this perspective, writing code is often just one of the means to achieve business results, rather than the ultimate goal.
Discussions on Hacker News generally agree that many organizational management layers' behavior is indeed as the author described, but they also add some differing viewpoints. Many comments point out that this phenomenon is not limited to the software development industry; various professional fields also have similar issues. Professionals often believe their skills are the irreplaceable core value of the enterprise, but in reality, the value of most employees tends to fade quickly with environmental and technological changes. A commenter emphasized that a developer's true value lies not in deep knowledge of specific technologies but in the ability to effectively address the organization's current business needs and problems, which is not limited to a single language or system.
Some discussers argue that developers themselves should self-position, avoiding the trap of 'being too specialized' and instead focus on discussing how to optimize their contributions to the enterprise. Some point out that if a company becomes overly reliant on specific technologies or personnel, it indicates serious flaws in the management and organization's risk control and knowledge transfer. Well-managed companies avoid single-person dependency (Single Point of Failure) and make the entire system and team more flexible and sustainable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43563533