Same problems, different teams

When I talk to people in other engineering teams, I often hear about the same problems we’re dealing with. Different industries, different products, small companies, large ones, old businesses, new ones. Yet there’s a familiar set of things we all seem to work through.

A language we want to move away from. APIs that need updating. Legacy code that’s difficult to change but still does something essential. People who joined early and know why things were built that way, and newer colleagues wondering why we’re still doing it.

We’re not all dealing with the same problem at the same time. One team is starting a migration, another is finishing one, and a third is beginning to question the choice they made a few years ago. It’s more or less the same set of problems, coming round again.

Right now, AI adoption seems to come up in almost every conversation. How do we use it well? Who wants to try it, who’s reluctant, and why? How do we help people get started when we’re still working out what works ourselves?

The products might have very little in common, but the conversations sound familiar.

I find that reassuring. It’s easy to get caught up in your own company’s problems and imagine that everyone else has figured things out. Talking to people elsewhere is a useful reminder that they’re also trying things, making compromises and working out what to do next.

When considering a job change, expect to encounter many of the same problems you’re trying to leave behind. Focus less on the technical, architectural, or organisational challenges and more on the people you’d be working with and the scale of the operation.

Would you rather make changes with a small team and see results quickly, or work across a bigger company where things take longer but affect more people? Both can be rewarding. It depends on where you want to put your energy and what you want to get out of it.

If your company is facing these problems, that may be good news. It’s trying to keep up, improve things and work out what comes next, like the rest of the industry. There’s no guarantee of where it will lead, but the company, and you with it, are on the moving train.

Originally published as a LinkedIn post.