The Real Problems Engineering Leaders Face
After 20-30 years, large-scale software becomes digital archaeology. People change, but legacy systems remain. Here's what we hear from engineering leaders every day.
The Universal Challenge: Software Engineering is Like Gardening
Code must be tended day in and day out. Under business pressure to deliver features, the essential tending of software falls by the wayside, creating compound technical debt that eventually threatens business continuity.
CTO / Engineering Leader
"We have 15-year-old applications that generate $50M+ in revenue, but adding a simple feature takes 6 months instead of 6 weeks. My best engineers spend 80% of their time fighting technical debt instead of building competitive advantages."
Engineering Manager
"My team delivered 20 features per quarter 2 years ago. Now we deliver 8, with the same team size. Every sprint, 60% of our capacity goes to 'technical maintenance' that I can't explain to product managers."
Systems Architect
"I'm responsible for system architecture across 50+ applications, but the documentation was last updated 3 years ago. Architecture reviews become archaeology expeditions."
Senior Developer
"I spend more time trying to understand what code does than actually writing new code. I waste 3 hours just figuring out how to make a 5-line change safely. This isn't programming; it's digital archaeology."
Why LLMs Alone Create Technical Debt, Not Sustainable Solutions
LLMs without proper software engineering foundations create a dangerous illusion of productivity that often leads to technical debt, unmaintainable code, and system failures.
Code Quality and Architecture
LLMs excel at generating code snippets but lack understanding of broader system architecture. Without engineering principles, developers end up with:
- Tightly coupled components that become impossible to modify
- No separation of concerns, making debugging nightmarish
- Inconsistent coding patterns across the codebase
- Missing error handling and edge case considerations
Testing and Reliability
LLMs can write individual functions but don't inherently understand comprehensive testing strategies. Engineers who rely solely on LLM output often skip:
- Unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end testing
- Test-driven development practices
- Performance testing and load considerations
- Security vulnerability testing
System Design Blindness
LLMs operate at the code level, not the system level. Without engineering expertise, you miss:
- Scalability planning and bottleneck identification
- Database design and query optimization
- API design principles and versioning strategies
- Monitoring, logging, and observability requirements
Technical Debt Accumulation
The most insidious problem is that LLM-generated code often works initially but creates massive technical debt:
- Quick fixes instead of proper solutions
- Copy-paste solutions without understanding context
- No consideration for future maintenance or feature additions
- Inconsistent data models and business logic
Security and Performance Gaps
LLMs don't inherently prioritize security or performance best practices:
- SQL injection vulnerabilities and other security flaws
- Memory leaks and inefficient algorithms
- Missing input validation and sanitization
- Poor resource management