[aaanotherhnfolk]

I've been on a team like this before with heavily separated feature and refactor pods and it doesn't really work.

The feature pods outpace the refactor pods. Feature pods can use a bad pattern 50 times in the time it takes refactor pods to fix 10 of them. Not every fix can be scripted. Some bad patterns restrict the ability for the codebase to stay up to date on dependencies, etc. Lots of reasons not to accumulate this stuff faster than you can strip it off.

It also impacted team cohesion, as refactor pods started to resent the poor quality of feature pods' deliverables. Since refactorers are peers, it got weird when they exerted refactor pressure on feature devs who got wedged between their peers and their managers.

Ultimately I think this article is a little too black and white. The "just do the ticket" dev is as undesirable a teammate as the "refactors to excess" dev. It's better if devs are a little of both and the team culture helps everyone keep a healthy balance.