The Strategic Decision: Why Senior Engineers Sometimes Let Flawed Projects Fail
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4mo ago· 12 min readenInsight
95/100
Golden Brown
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Hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked to perfection. Worth every minute at the bakery.
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Summary
The article explores why senior engineers sometimes allow flawed projects to fail rather than intervening, drawing from the author's personal experience transitioning from a junior to senior engineer. It examines the evolution of perspective on when to offer unsolicited advice, the importance of organizational dynamics and team autonomy, and the strategic considerations behind letting teams learn from their own mistakes rather than imposing solutions from outside.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI used to wonder, 'But you are very senior, why don't you just go and speak to them about your concerns?' It felt like a waste of his influence to not say anything.
So it's quite ironic that I found myself last week explaining to a mentee why I thought a sister team's project would have to pivot because they'd made a poor early design choice.
And he rightfully asked me the same question I had years ago: 'why don't you just tell them your opinion?'
It's been on my mind ever since because I realized I'd changed my stance on it a lot over the years.
When I was a junior engineer, my manager would occasionally confide his frustrations to me in our weekly 1:1s. He would point out a project another team was working on and say, “I don’t believe that project will go anywhere, they’re solving the wrong prob
