There are two options, either they are lousy at their jobs, or they are incapable of pushing back against unrealistic demands. Neither is a good indicator of their skill and talent as engineers.

I know I am speaking from a position of some privilege, but I have previously left workplaces that did not allow me to practice good engineering, and I do expect others to do so.

In a SWE job market like this, do you really want to be seen as the "conscientious objector"?

There are literally thousands of people who are ready to ride up the totem pole, it would not be a difficult decision for a bad manager to swing his axe and replace the new head

Talented engineers shouldn’t have much problem finding another position even in this market (of course they should find one before leaving I’m not discounting family responsibilities and whatnot), so if your argument is they’re not able to leave and find another job then you’re essentially agreeing with the person you’re replying to.

Or, they've been given crap primitives to work with. There's only so much lipstick you can put on a pig. I don't know what database they're using or what their pub sub and streaming looks like, or even what their system diagram actually looks like. But, well, you don't see Google having these kinds of problems. Other ones, sure, but between Chubby and Spanner, if Google had bought GitHub we wouldn't be having these problems.

But it wasn't a pig. It was a reliable system, and then it increasingly became an unreliable one, in a way that is not explainable by the mere increase in demand. Whatever rearchitecture was performed, it was done and is apparently being perpetuated by software engineers who should be held accountable. Not necessarily guilty, or even directly at fault, but accountable nevertheless. "I am just an employee of a bad company" is not a valid excuse for an engineer.

eh...

https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/oct21-post-in...

They tried to scale MySql and turn it into Cassandra and then they lost customer data (that they claimed to later recover).

Really? Only two possibilities?

yes I would tell them "you're underpaid, if you can, come to a company that appreciates your talents more".

What you said came across as an adverse judgment of their skill and talent. Is that not what you meant?

I've interviewed at many large tech companies including Microsoft, and Microsoft Azure was mostly a clown show. So, yes I judge the talent there. I'm sure there are some superstars that I'd love to work with, maybe I'd even work there and try to fix it for the right price, but god damn was it a stark contrast to other companies.

Are you hiring?

Yes google cloud is actively hiring.