You Are Not Budgeting for Real Engineering

Everyone wants better systems. Almost no one protects the time needed to build them.

They fail to allocate time for real engineering.

Outcomes are expected, but only outputs receive time allocation. Leverage is desired, but its upfront cost remains unpaid. This resembles borrowing money without any intention of repayment, accumulating technical debt and hoping the bill never arrives. Consequently, engineers are left starved, not of talent or motivation, but of calendar space.

The Illusion of Full-Time Engineering

"You have 40+ hours a week. Use them wisely."

In theory, an engineer has a full work week available. In practice:

• Meetings consume deep time. The distinction between a lean, purposeful meeting and a bloated, performative one remains unclear. Many meetings belong to the "you should attend" category, not because input is required, but because presence signals engagement. Coordination becomes ritual, collaboration turns into obligation.
• Slack and notifications disrupt flow, a constant low-grade cognitive attack disguised as collaboration. The toxicity of Slack warrants an entire book. Instant availability becomes the norm, signal deteriorates into noise, and the illusion of communication supplants real focus. It is not merely a tool; it amplifies culture, for better or worse.
• Context-switching between tickets, reviews, and rituals fragments focus. This fragmentation often stems from poor assessment of process balance. Misused rituals become burdens rather than supports. Yet well-structured rituals remain essential, they align, anchor, and sustain momentum. The challenge lies in distinguishing the two and applying discipline.

What remains are scattered blocks of genuine engineering time, insufficient for deep thinking or crafting something enduring. Nevertheless, planning continues as if time were limitless and cognition linear.

The Hidden Tax of Velocity Theatre

Organisations often measure velocity, but reward throughput theatre:

• Number of tickets closed
• Story points consumed
• MVPs launched

Most of these measurements overlook the time factor, the gap between how long tasks ought to take if executed properly versus the artificial compression imposed by arbitrary cycles. Efficiency without temporal awareness invites self-sabotage.

Familiar consequences follow: duplicated logic, fragile systems, bloated architectures, and a relentless wave of technical debt.

The root cause remains rarely named: no time is allocated for doing things properly.

Refactoring, platform work, documentation, testing, and technical design become secondary. At best, these are optional tasks fitted in "when time permits". At worst, they appear indulgent.

Thus, the very activities essential for sustainable delivery are systematically punished.

Craft Is Not a Side Project

“We shall clean it up later.” And thus more debt accumulates.

Later rarely arrives.

Craft does not represent a phase, a heroic act, or overtime effort. It belongs to engineering DNA, a foundational expression of how resilient systems are conceived and maintained.

It defines the baseline mode of operation for those who build systems designed to evolve.

True engineering entails:

• Thinking prior to coding
• Designing before scaling
• Cleaning before expanding
• Refactoring prior to adding
• Documenting before handing over

These tasks are not luxurious extras. They distinguish craft from chaos.

Budgeting Time: The Invisible Leverage

High-functioning teams allocate time explicitly:

• 60% for feature delivery
• 20% for system health (refactoring, automation, performance)
• 10% for slack (incidents, unplanned issues, exploration)
• 10% for learning and internal improvement

Such allocation does not represent waste. It behaves like compound interest.

Problems are assumed, not ignored. Time is structured to support sustainability—not perfection.

Long-term thinking requires protected time.

Not as a luxury, but as a professional foundation. This has little to do with Google's Friday innovation hours. This concerns the essence of the engineering role. Only a small portion, perhaps 10 to 20 percent, pursue engineering due to its cognitive challenges: puzzles, systems, and complex problem-solving. Research into vocational orientation and systemising tendencies (e.g. Baron-Cohen, 2003; Su et al., 2009) confirms such traits are unevenly distributed. These individuals thrive on thought. Denying them time denies their nature.

Platform and Infrastructure Teams: The Collateral Victims

Platform and infrastructure teams endure disproportionate pressure:

• Constant interruptions
• Unseen outcomes
• Undervalued interfaces
• No visibility in product metrics

They frequently become hidden cost centres for technical debt—forced to perform hotfixes, manual enablement, and brittle integrations without time to generalise or document.

Because platform excellence typically constitutes the pole of engineering quality within an organisation, not flashy AI demonstrations or the latest UI flourish, but modular foundations upon which others build.

However, platform excellence requires greater, not lesser, time allocation:

• Mature interfaces
• Systemic thinking
• Automation at scale
• Proactive enablement

When time is budgeted only for reactive tasks, foundations remain unbuilt—and the organisation eventually slows.

This explains why we proposed the Fluid Organisation model, which acknowledges that delivery velocity at the system's core and its surface must follow different rhythms. Platform teams operate within structural depth, where leverage and resilience outweigh immediacy. Without adequate time protection, they cannot execute this mission, and the entire organisation bears the cost.

Protect the Calendar, Protect the Future

If the aim includes:

• Fewer outages
• Greater delivery capacity
• Reduced friction
• Improved onboarding
• Stronger retention

Then the question should shift from, “How can engineers move faster?” to, “Do they possess the time to practise engineering?”

Time does not represent a soft variable. It constitutes the most strategic constraint.

Even when leadership agrees with this assessment, short-term pressures, vanity metrics, and stakeholder appeasement often distort the calendar. The issue stems not from ignorance, but from incentives. Organisations reward short feedback loops, political optics, and output visibility, continually trading future resilience for present motion.

Protecting time for engineering does not constitute resistance. It exemplifies leadership. Engineers alone cannot defend their calendar while the system glorifies surface metrics. Leaders must define the rhythm, guard the margin, and recognise the value of work that accelerates others, even if it appears slower.

Consider this contrast:

• Team A delivers ten features in two months. Six require rework, two trigger regressions, and onboarding degrades.
• Team B delivers five features with robust tests, clear documentation, and reusable components. After six months, they operate twice as fast, with half the effort.

For those leading platform teams: your role does not concern increased personal velocity. It centres on making others faster, safely, consistently, and without dependency. That mission requires time. Either allocate it, or lose it.

Craft dies in the margins. Excellence begins in the calendar.

This belief underpins the Fluid Organisation model: acknowledging that systems contain multiple layers of speed, each requiring distinct protection. Surface agility depends on deep structural stability. Platform teams and systemic engineers need long-cycle investment. Without it, the system degrades from within.

#EngineeringLeadership #PlatformThinking #Craftsmanship #VelocityTheatre #SustainableTech