Why senior engineers let bad projects fail

Overall reaction to “letting bad projects fail”

• Many commenters see the advice as realistic for large, political orgs: influence is finite, bad ideas are infinite, and being “the negative person” hurts your ability to get anything done.
• Others think it’s actively harmful: if you see foreseeable failure and stay silent, you’re failing your colleagues, users, and company.

Speaking up vs staying quiet

• Common “middle path”:
  • Raise concerns once (often in writing), suggest alternatives, then drop it.
  • Don’t carry the emotional burden if leadership ignores you.
• Several report good outcomes from calmly voicing concerns, especially when they separate critique of the project from critique of people.
• Others describe being punished or even fired for pushing back, especially where managers felt their competence was questioned.

Ethics, responsibility, and “not my company”

• One camp frames silence as amoral careerism; preventing multi‑year, resource‑burning failures is seen as an ethical duty.
• Another camp says employment is a business transaction: your obligation is to do assigned work and advise when asked; if leadership wants bad bets, your ethical move is to leave, not to fight.
• Debate over whether obviously doomed-but-harmless projects are “wasted time” or acceptable “white‑collar welfare.”

Politics, power, and context

• In large orgs, by the time you hear of a project it’s already blessed by layers of management; overturning it is usually above an engineer’s pay grade.
• “Social/influence capital” is likened to a bank account: constant naysaying spends it; carefully chosen interventions can invest it.
• Some note that outsiders often misjudge “bad” projects; crusades against them can backfire if they succeed or are politically important.

Size of company and culture

• Startups and small orgs: feedback tends to have more traction; speaking up feels more like a duty to the company.
• Big tech / bureaucracies: politics, empire-building, and misaligned incentives dominate; safest move is often to let non-harmful projects fail and focus on work you own.

Coping strategies

• Many prioritize self-preservation: pick only a few hills to die on (user harm, pager pain, major risk), optimize for learning and paycheck, and find fulfillment in side projects or helping appreciative stakeholders.