I do exactly this - wouldn’t say I spend lots of time on it, but I definitely chunk my commits.
To be clear - I give zero ****s about “git history”.
I do it for myself.
I try to do everything in life excellently.
I guess it is a sort of OCD - but have my moments of “screw it, ‘git add .’ ‘git commit -m “a lazy message”’ “. But I am allowed to do this, because I am elite, and I am making a conscious choice do do it in that moment - “do what I say, not what I do”/“rules for me, rules for thee”
I think we've both been on either side of that coin. Where rules where enforced, on some.
We all use what power we have as leaders, to make the best decisions we can, sometimes selfishly. It was only when I saw my decisions come home to roost, and how it affected the greater mindset of my team. (it's incredible to watch how fast power actually rewires a brain) that I learnt that rules are rules regardless of position.
That day I learnt the hard way, that power, applied by the inconsiderate is a runaway train.
A short tale of ruthless ruler mentality.
We hired 2 junior devs, one remote, one local, and handed them an angular rebuild. Basic ****, db, api generation, frontend scaffolding, with support from a copywriter and a designer for assets.
I checked in with the local and remote devs, twice a week. Mondays, and Fridays. They had to keep regular hours with a bit of a timezone difference.
The wheels came off, 3 weeks in, why? Cause the local dev, together with the copywriter decided to take the project in a different direction. And make a simple rebuild into a portfolio piece. The designer nearly quit, (it took some real sweet talking to keep her) and the remote dev started committing less and less.
So 3 weeks, into a 6 week rebuild, the project looked nothing like the specs the client had signed off on, and the junior dev had the balls to sit his ass down in a client meeting and tell the client to his face that has no idea about his market, and that the way the site is currently being rebuilt by him (alone) is going to increase product adoption dramatically.
I was thinking to myself, at that moment, motherf***er, Mercedes knows how to sell cars, they've been doing it since the 19th century. They do not need some fresh from the books 23 year old telling them how to market their product.
He walked out of that progress update meeting, and then him and the copywriter dipped for lunch.
Needless to say, I had to spin some **** about how good the rebuild actually was, speed, responsiveness and that we where really passionate about this project...
Thank god for contracts, cause I logged into his work machine and discovered how he had been ordering the designer and remote dev to do the rebuild, while he was working on "the better version" on a different branch.
IP theft, it was heading that way, internal briefs, shared with friends, yep. Designs shared publicly, you bet.
Breach of NDA, that's how we dropped him from the project.
All of this because I as the lead on this project, assumed that people could handle a little bit of power, and work as a team.
Moral of the story, iron clad contracts, and good procedure for everyone, stops bad actors from getting away with rotting a project from the inside.
