Arguments like “but it works” or “it gets the job done” are tell-tale signs of someone happy at the lowest level of the technical hierarchy and your cue to just quietly back out of the debate. —DHH
Of the three startups I've worked with, two of the three were ridiculously over-engineered monstrosities that were way over time budget. It was clear that the CIO/CTO wanted to do cool fun stuff and not build a marketable product.
The other was cobbled together with completely shit code, was constantly breaking on releases, and was glued together with perl scripts. They're now publicly traded.
