Honestly, nothing.
I’ve had some bad experiences in my career so far, but I wouldn’t go back and change any of it.
I believe I am the engineer I am now because of all the experiences I have had.
Embrace your bad experiences and awful projects, because you gain a greater appreciation for the right way to build things when you’ve witnessed the wrong way first hand.

As an engineer I will switch from university research to project management in the industry in December. I would appreciate to hear some 1st hand experience on how to recognise the wrong way early.

@lastNick If the team is constantly fighting fires, fixing bugs and rarely meeting deadlines, something (probably a lot of things) is being done wrong.

The most important thing IMO is trust. The team needs to be trusted and given the flexibility to do what they need to do. Too often the team’s work is mandated by what the management think should be done next but really that should be a joint decision with technical input. And managers need to trust that the engineers know their stuff and can get the job done.

Trust = absolutely necessary
Key Performance Indicators = evil

Thats my formula for software development lol

I maintain a Java 1.8 codebase with literally hundreds of files with well over 1k lines per file.

The only experience I'm getting from this, is what not to do. Ever.

Send help.