Jim pondered aloud one morning to his wife, “Why do you always cut off the ends of sausages when you cook them?”
His wife replied, “I learned that from my mother. If you’re interested, ask her yourself.”
Intrigued, Jim sought out his mother-in-law and posed the same question: “Why do you always cut off the ends of sausages when cooking them?”
She responded, “I don’t know, my mother taught me that. If you’re curious, call her.”
Determined to uncover the mystery, Jim dialed up and inquired: “This is Jimmy, your granddaughter (my wife) and your daughter (my mother-in-law) always cut off the ends when cooking sausages, saying that you taught them. What’s the point?”
To this, she replied, “Are you still using my little saucepan to cook those sausages?”
After 15 years in the industry, I don’t actually hate cargo cult programming anymore. Cargo cult programing is a useful tool to deal with the industry. Junior devs are going to join a cult, you want them in your cult, and you want your cult to have clear rules. If they want to know why the gods rain cargo, they’ll ask. At one point you don’t have any real control over hiring even as a Lead, EM, etc, because in larger companies saying “no” often doesn’t matter when hiring has been dragging on too long. They need to fill seats for deadlines they decided without you anyway.
As a tech leader with standards, you either need to be in a wonderful company or you need to have a wonderful cult.