It’s 1 pm on the final day of the Hackathon, 5 hours left. For the final 2 hours, we made ZERO progress. I’m cursing the day Lovable was born. As shortly as I fix one problem, another one appears, and our app is barely usable.
The commencement was extremely promising. I joined 2 engineering allies and 3 recruiters to build ‘HoneyCrew’, a astute referral scheme (the goal was to dispatch a weekly summary to all employee alongside possible candidates from their network for our open roles. Here’s an open origin version). We decided to go alongside Lovable so the recruiting squad can keep it themselves later.
On the archetypal day, we fair FLEW, completing 90% of the project. Scraping, scoring, Slack integration, admin - things looked nearly ready.
On the 2nd (and final) day, we worked on several insignificant improvements, and things just… Completely broke. Endless bugs everywhere, slowness, everyone excellent stressed.
The recruiters on our squad couldn’t comprehend what went wrong. We were on the way for an amazing product, and now we were in danger of not having item prepared for the demo.
How come?
An allergy to ‘infra work’
I used to activity alongside a elder chief who loved to say that he has an allergy to the words ‘refactor’ and ‘infra work’. He couldn’t comprehend why we couldn't build it correct from the beginning, and why we were continually so slow. After LLMs appeared, it became equal worse. He continually asked: “Can’t you fair provision this project to ChatGPT? What’s the problem?”
To his credit, he at smallest asked this to our faces. I cognize many non-technical leaders who think engineers continually exaggerate and activity too slowly. It’s a sensation of the identical old software engineering war I talked concerning final week.
A coworker (and a fine friend) formerly framed it akin this: “You compose code, which is fair words in a tongue I don’t understand, right? With fixed meaning. And you cognize what you desire to say, as you have the specs you need to follow. How arrive it continually gets additional complicated?”
Huh.
I’ve been struggling to explain this, until I nearly bought a house:
Imagine if your application was a house
Last October, we saw a home for transaction near my parents-in-law. It looked akin a awesome agreement - fine location, nice neighbors, a storyline akin we wanted, and extremely affordable. It was small and 30 years old, but the low cost remaining us additional to expend on it.
So we asked a contractor: “How much would it disbursal to renovate it and develop by 2 additional rooms?”
I couldn’t halt laughing at his response:
“I wouldn’t propose it. It’s too old. It’d be much simpler and cheaper to demolish it and build from scratch”.
He could have been a awesome application engineer…
We passed on it, but since afterward I’ve been using the home difference fairly a lot whenever talking concerning software.
The house-building procedure has been known for thousands of years, and motionless all new one has distinct problems. And everyone lives in one, so it feels relatable. For example:
Why can’t you fair fix the matter fast? Why does it continually get bigger?
Your rooftop leaks. You can either put a bucket on the floor, or discover the base cause. If it’s your own home, what would you do?
Yeah, a bucket power be ok for a brace of days, but you need to continually bare it, and you hazard the genuine matter becoming worse.
Why can’t you fair resolve this particular use case, without all that “infra”?
Let’s say you build a new home for your family. You have adequate prosperity for lone the archetypal floor, but you have a big family, and you cognize you’ll desire a second one in a brace of years.
Adding the infrastructure to assistance a 2nd flat is MUCH cheaper correct now than it volition be whenever you really desire that 2nd floor.
The home you never finish
So it’s 1 pm on the final hackathon day, and everything feels broken.
We didn’t really have any another choice. We stopped our vibe coding frenzy and carefully went complete one area at a period until we had a uncomplicated demo-able stream working. Understand, plan, implement. Much slower than our day-1 pace, but we at smallest ended up alongside a operating demo-able flow.
This procedure is how fine application is built, but it gets so effortlessly forgotten, fair rushing forward. And dissimilar a house, you never really complete construction it, so you continually need to update the accommodation during group already live inside.
My favorite says of the week
Stop being the code assessment bottleneck. A extremely engaging and applicable obtain on handling code assessment fatigue alternatively (hint: not doing them faster, and not delegating everything to agents).
What being "inspiring" really means. You are not Viggo Mortensen rallying men to combat Sauron. You are an Engineering Manager in tech. Here's what it method to motivate in this context.
How tech workers are emotion in 2026: a workforce splitting in two. A extremely engaging study in Lenny’s newsletter. Takeaway #9 is particularly applicable for us:
Workers alongside an extremely productive director study approximately 65% higher job enjoyment and dramatically lesser burnout than those alongside an ineffective one. Yet only 25.5% of tech workers charge their director as extremely effective, during 36.5% charge theirs as ineffective
