Manager: I need you to come up with a quick, temporary solution.

Me: Ok...but it will be kind of hackish and ugly.

Manager: Yes that's completely understandable.

Me: So again you say this is just temporary right?

Manager: Yes we will come up with a permanent solution soon.

*that was over a year ago and the "temporary" solution is not-so-temporary it seems*

Life is temporary

What is a mere century in the grand scale of the univers...

This is why I always get clarity on the exact due date of the cleanup/followup, and hold teams to it.

That's why temporary solutions should always have side effects :)

if (date > '2019-12-31') { throw exception('build better software') }

Problem solved. Management said it would be temporary, now it is.

@bittersweet that I like!

Nothing lasts longer than temporary solutions

I cooked at a place that took this approach to hardware fixes. Drain pipe from the sinks came loose and fell, to where water from the sinks wasn't making it into the pipes. The temporary solution was to prop it up with a beer pitcher that we never served from anyways because of it's age.

Four months later that pitcher was still there. And the owner wonders why people won't buy his place.

There even an old Russian proverb for just this: "nothing is as permanent as a temporary solution"

Add a comment in the code about manager insisting you for a temp solution. This way you can save your life from the new dev who picks up your code.