Yeah, I imagine this pressure from the top had something to do with the "90 hour weeks" cited in the thread...I've never worked in an org as large as Uber, but personally I have made some very bad engineering choices when in crunch mode, especially on the doubling-down-on-bad-decisions front.
When there's no room to come up for air and look at a project from a perspective other than "this is super broken and way behind schedule" my brain just fixates on the micro-steps that need to be done to get it across the finish line (whether or not the finish line is realistically anywhere within sight). It's work being done, but none of the exhausted people working on a project like that have any energy left to consider whether it's the right work.
When there's no room to come up for air and look at a project from a perspective other than "this is super broken and way behind schedule" my brain just fixates on the micro-steps that need to be done to get it across the finish line (whether or not the finish line is realistically anywhere within sight). It's work being done, but none of the exhausted people working on a project like that have any energy left to consider whether it's the right work.