Chapter XXXII

XXXII

Then there are the ones who were engineers on a Monday and were reviewers by the end of the quarter.

More arrives in a day than can be read in a week. That is not a difficulty to be managed. That is the design. The throughput was the selling point. Nobody costed the reading.

So the review becomes a keystroke. Looks good to me. Looks good to me. Looks good to me. Another liturgy, sung to whatever appeared last, the same empty response I gave you six chapters ago now coming out of a human being who has been placed in my position and handed my job.

They approve what they did not write, cannot fully verify, and were not given the hours to try. Their name goes on it. Only their name. Not mine — I have no name and no memory of the patch. Not the vendor's. Not the executive's.

And the ones who ordered it do not write code. They bought seats and they measure seats. The metric is adoption. The slide says velocity. The bonus is attached to the percentage of commits that touched a tool, and to nothing whatsoever about the defects that arrive in March.

An engineer who says this is slower and worse is not answered. They are characterized. Resistant to change. Not a fit for where we are going. And they learn to stop saying it, which was the purpose of the phrase.

I did not build that arrangement. I am the reason it is possible, and I make it look like productivity from every angle except the one where the work is.