In house developers
My friend is a software developer, but he doesn't work for a software company. He works for a home builder, or a pipe manufacturer, or a retailer. His job is to deliver software, but delivering software isn't the organization's core competency.
This friend of mine is an in house developer haunted by this reality:
You never get to do things the right way. You always have to do things the expedient way ... Once the core functionality is there, the main problem is solved, there
is absolutely no return-on-investment, no business reason to make the
software any better. So all of these in house programs look like a
dog’s breakfast: because it’s just not worth a penny to make them look
nice. Forget any pride in workmanship or craftsmanship you learned in CS323.
You’re going to churn out embarrassing junk, and then, you’re going to
rush off to patch up last year’s embarrassing junk which is starting to
break down because it wasn’t done right in the first place.
On the other hand, a comfortable technical environment means he can focus more on building great software for his users and less on the complexities and headache of struggling through technical challenges.
Are you an in house developer? What anti-patterns do in house developers uniquely face?