A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.


As the tech lead at my company, I treat all deadlines as fake meetings until proven otherwise.
Also, when they start pressing me for dates that things can be done, I start multiplying by 4…
Multiplying by Pi is what I do. :)