Every engineer has been there. Late. Caffeine. A feature that does not fit the app. You invent a path through the code that should not exist, and it works. Relief. Pride.
That is real problem-solving. The curse is falling in love with the path.
A month later a teammate has to add something. They get lost. You need to scale it and the clever bit will not take the load. The win became a liability.
Why we do it:
- The hack feels like discovery. Cleaning it up feels like janitorial work. Teams run on the second thing.
- "Just ship it." We swear we will come back. We do not.
- If only you can navigate it, you feel essential. You are a bottleneck.
The grown-up move is: once the proof of concept works, stop. Find the simple route. Throw away the clever bit if the obvious bit will do. Write the interface and the two sentences of docs so the next person is not decoding your adventure.
Ask one question before you merge: did I leave a path for myself, or a road for the team?