Why Silent Quick Fixes Hurt Your Team

Let me tell you a story I’ve seen too many times. A developer notices a slow database query during a quiet afternoon. They think, “I’ll just fix this quickly,” add an index without telling anyone, and push the change. The query speeds up, and they feel proud. Two weeks later, the system crashes during peak hours because that index caused deadlocks nobody anticipated. The team spends days fixing it, and everyone wonders, “Who even made this change?”

This is what happens when we solve problems in isolation. That “quick fix” might feel efficient in the moment, but it often creates bigger problems for the team later. I’m not saying we should never act fast, sometimes quick fixes are necessary. But doing them silently, without talking to teammates, is like repairing a car engine without telling the driver. It might run smoother for a day, but eventually, the whole thing breaks down in traffic.

Here’s the irony: this mindset contradicts the very idea of teamwork. When one person “fixes” something alone, they assume they understand the whole system. But modern software is too interconnected for that. For example, a backend engineer might tweak an API response to save milliseconds, not realizing the mobile team built their entire caching logic around the old format. Suddenly, the app starts crashing for users, and nobody knows why. The “fix” becomes a week-long fire for everyone.

This doesn’t mean we should avoid fixes altogether (like I said in my last post about refactoring). Sometimes code needs to change. The difference is in how we do it. A quick fix becomes dangerous when it’s done secretly, without asking, “Who else does this affect?” I’ve worked on systems where a “temporary” hack from years ago became permanent because the original developer left, and nobody knew why it existed. New engineers would see it, think it’s useless, remove it… and break production.

The worst part? These silent fixes breed distrust. QA starts blaming engineers for untested changes. DevOps gets angry about unexpected server spikes. Managers lose faith in the team’s ability to hit deadlines. All because someone decided to act alone instead of saying, “Hey, I noticed this issue, how should we handle it?”

So how do we balance urgency with teamwork? Start small. If you’re fixing something quickly:

• Leave a detailed comment explaining why you did it (not just what you did).
• Message the team channel: “Made a quick tweak to X to solve Y, let me know if anyone spots issues.”
• During the next standup, mention it: “Heads up, I adjusted the inventory API to fix slow responses. Frontend team, does this affect you?”

This isn’t about slowing down. It’s about recognizing that even small changes ripple across teams. That “5-minute fix” might save hours for you but cost days for others.

And to tie this to my last post about refactoring: sometimes the right choice is to leave code alone. But when you do need to change it, don’t do it in the dark. Talk. Document. Collaborate. The business might depend on that ugly code, but it depends even more on the team’s ability to work together.