Technical Excellence: Lost. Like Atlantis. But with more AI JavaScript.
Once upon a time, engineers knew things. Not Googled things. Crafted things. We automated builds, wrote real tests, treated code like it could explode if mishandled, which it did, and we were proud when it didn't. It was elegant. Precise. Shameful if the customer found a bug. Now? It's fashionable to push broken features into production and call it MVP.
Nowadays, we want to engineer. But we don't get the space for applying our knowledge. Every training is useless when you can't apply it.
"Senior Developers" parade around with 10 years of experience by repeating the same year 10 times. They chant Clean Architecture but build everything in main(). They talk about TDD, then mock their way into oblivion. They don’t refactor, as it's not in the ticket. They don’t simplify, they just make it work. They wait for ticket assignments like robots awaiting firmware updates.
Worse: nobody creates anymore. They consume tools. No one understands the layers. No one asks why.
Agility? Without engineering excellence, it's just theatre. You can't move fast if you don't know how your engine works.
Want to be agile? Build engineers who:
* Understand architecture beyond drawing hexagons.
* Write tests that assert behaviour, not just lines executed.
* Know the cost of a dependency.
* Automate not for fun, but for resilience.
* Take responsibility before being told to.
* Stop chasing tools & Start understanding systems.
* Build things that work, not just compile.
Technical excellence is not a luxury. It's the foundation. And without it, you're not building software. You're just decorating the Titanic.
Agility without engineering is chaos in a hoodie.
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