Not parent, but in my experience as a consultant working with bad teams, the rank and file were 'doing the job.'
You usually had a few personality archetypes:
- The most technical dev on the team, always with a chip on their shoulder and serious personality issues, who had decided to settle for this job for (reasons)
- The vastly undertrained dev who was trying to keep up with the rest of the team, but would eventually be found out and tossed, usually to blame for a major issue
- The earnest and surprisingly competent meek dev, who presumably didn't have enough confidence to apply to a better job, but easily could have made it on merit, work ethic, and skill
- The over-confident dev who read a bit of SDLC practice, and could see every tree while missing the forest
The key is that, aside from the incompetent person, they had all always been working there for awhile. Consequently, there wasn't good or bad health and quality: there was just "the system" (at that company) and dealing with it.
And none of these folks ever worked at 5-person startups. ;) I think it was definitely more an issue of SDLC "unknown unknowns" they should be doing, than willful decisions not to.
You usually had a few personality archetypes:
- The most technical dev on the team, always with a chip on their shoulder and serious personality issues, who had decided to settle for this job for (reasons)
- The vastly undertrained dev who was trying to keep up with the rest of the team, but would eventually be found out and tossed, usually to blame for a major issue
- The earnest and surprisingly competent meek dev, who presumably didn't have enough confidence to apply to a better job, but easily could have made it on merit, work ethic, and skill
- The over-confident dev who read a bit of SDLC practice, and could see every tree while missing the forest
The key is that, aside from the incompetent person, they had all always been working there for awhile. Consequently, there wasn't good or bad health and quality: there was just "the system" (at that company) and dealing with it.
And none of these folks ever worked at 5-person startups. ;) I think it was definitely more an issue of SDLC "unknown unknowns" they should be doing, than willful decisions not to.