I think the newbie coming to the fancy pancy hubernates cluster company in 5 years when you and the other engineers have moved on will have a complete new level of headache inducing mess to deal with compared to what you had at the boring company as a newbie.
I started out my career thinking best practices with agile, code review, CI and "shared ownership" and stuff were the way to go.
But in the end I like the old siloed do-your-stuff way more. It works and gives you actual ownership and freedom. It turns out that it is easier to cooperate when you can say no.
I was thinking the same. I feel like I've seen the cycle with my own eyes at this point. Projects almost always seem fresh and good at the beginning, and then they become monsters after awhile seemingly no matter what you do.
I mean GP could have been at a genuinely bad place with bad practices.
It could also be that he was just a idealistic newbie trying to give advice to hardened experts rightfully ignoring it. HR boss agreeing does not tell us anything. They are buzzword driven.
I started out my career thinking best practices with agile, code review, CI and "shared ownership" and stuff were the way to go.
But in the end I like the old siloed do-your-stuff way more. It works and gives you actual ownership and freedom. It turns out that it is easier to cooperate when you can say no.