Many engineers love the idea of working on greenfield projects. That is, new projects, where design mistakes and technical debt have not yet been acrued.

I’ve worked on a number of such projects over the years, but there’s a problem that’s practically always overlooked with these types of projects.

A greenfield project is only greenfield for about a week.

Very quickly, you’ll start bumping into decisions you made, which don’t fit the current circumstance perfectly, and you’ll begin refactoring. You’ll begin to see that you’re working on a brownfield project.

What can you do?

Stop dreaming of your next greenfield project, and just learn to deal with technical debt, legacy code, refactoring, and all the other things that come with the territory.