I've been working at this company for about a year now. it's a growth company working in B2B. I'm one year out of university, with a major in computer science. I work in the web team, using an Angular frontend and node as the backend. Throughout my time here It's always irked me how little effort seems to be put into the codebase. Massive files (1000 lines +) containing entire pages of components that haven't been broken down into subsequent components. Lack of static typing (either typescript or jsdoc, I'm not overly picky). Poorly named functions and variables, you get the point.

The thing that scares me the most is the lack of testing. There was an initiative to hire an end-to-end tester about a year ago, so we have a small portion (around 1%) of our end-to-end functions tested. There's a very small number of unit tests, which aren't even running on our CI pipelines. I noticed these shortcomings when I started, and I began reading many highly regarded books to understand how to not contribute to these shortfalls (Clean Code, Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Architecture, Don't Make Me Think, how Google tests software, etc). Over a couple of beers, I mentioned to my manager about these shortcomings. She was interested to hear my feedback, but her response was along the lines of "I appreciate your concern. However, these books that you've been reading are all written by developers in B2C companies. At this company we are growing so fast, and the requirements are changing so quickly that we throw away our code so frequently. Why put time into writing code that has a 50% chance of being thrown away within the next year. If you want to write perfect software, become a scholar". I understand where she's coming from, in the sense that these authors tend to come from sizeable B2C companies. I also understand that there's a balance between the immediate value and the delayed value of code. This opinion doesn't resonate with me however, as from my understanding, testing (unit, end-to-end, usability, etc.) would appear even more suitable in this situation with fast changing requirements. I'm interested in knowing whether this really is the norm in B2B software companies? I'm not trying to prove her wrong, because I really respect her work, she has done an awful lot for the company, and I have no doubt that we wouldn't be at the state we are today without her. Open to any answers, including those that tell me I'm being naive and overly optimistic, because then I can set my expectations for work appropriately.

Thank you for all feedback!

I've been working at this company for about a year now. it's a growth company working in B2B. I'm one year out of university, with a major in computer science. I work in the web team, using an Angular frontend and node as the backend. Throughout my time here it's always irked me how little effort seems to be put into the codebase. Massive files (1000 lines +) containing entire pages of components that haven't been broken down into subsequent components. Lack of static typing (either typescript or jsdoc, I'm not overly picky). Poorly named functions and variables, you get the point.

The thing that scares me the most is the lack of testing. There was an initiative to hire an end-to-end tester about a year ago, so we have a small portion (around 1%) of our end-to-end functions tested. There's a very small number of unit tests, which aren't even running on our CI pipelines. I noticed these shortcomings when I started, and I began reading many highly regarded books to understand how to not contribute to these shortfalls (Clean Code, Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Architecture, Don't Make Me Think, how Google tests software, etc). 

Over a couple of beers, I mentioned to my manager about these shortcomings. She was interested to hear my feedback, but her response was along the lines of "I appreciate your concern. However, these books that you've been reading are all written by developers in B2C companies. At this company we are growing so fast, and the requirements are changing so quickly that we throw away our code so frequently. Why put time into writing code that has a 50% chance of being thrown away within the next year. If you want to write perfect software, become a scholar". 

I understand where she's coming from, in the sense that these authors tend to come from sizeable B2C companies. I also understand that there's a balance between the immediate value and the delayed value of code. This opinion doesn't resonate with me however, as from my understanding, testing (unit, end-to-end, usability, etc.) would appear even more suitable in this situation with fast changing requirements. 

I'm interested in knowing whether this really is the norm in B2B software companies? I'm not trying to prove her wrong, because I really respect her work, she has done an awful lot for the company, and I have no doubt that we wouldn't be at the state we are today without her. 

Open to any answers, including those that tell me I'm being naive and overly optimistic, because then I can set my expectations for work appropriately.