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> All they had to do was implement a nested set pattern for their groups

In my experience, "all you have to do is..." is always followed by something heinous.



My manager used to do that so much with outrageous over-simplification that I instituted a rule. If, in any budget/estimation/planning meeting, anyone said "all you have to do is ..." or "it's just ...", they were volunteering for that task to be assigned to them.

Epilogue: it was a Pyrrhic victory. He wrote absolutely terrible code which was difficult to read, impossible to maintain, had no tests or docs, and ignored all coding standards. Every task looked easy to him because all it needed was a drive-by hack to make it look good for a quick demo on Friday, and he wasn't going to be the one to fix the inevitable bugs found in it next week.


All you have to do is tell your manager their code will only be accepted once it meets the team standards. ;)


...at which point such managers will usually point out that they are the team standards.




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