Does the word change the "quick fix?"
hack/jugaad vs kludge/bodge
I’m in Bengaluru to attend a friend’s wedding, and it has been fascinating walking around and seeing “the creative ways” of cable management, and my perspective from Singapore and Sweden is definitely to question the safety and longevity.

Coils of cables, some without the protective coating, all just lying around. What looks like some fiber cables for good measure.
In the group chat for the wedding the groom said that a very helpful word to explain this is “jugaad” which per Wikipedia:
a concept of non-conventional, frugal innovation on the Indian subcontinent. It also includes innovative fixes or simple workarounds, solutions that bend the rules, or resources that can be used in such a way.
Fair enough, make do with what you have, I love that, but I still felt… uncomfortable even if I can appreciate that it works. (as an aside, it’s worth reading the whole Wikipedia article for the examples!)
I showed some of these photos to Mari who then pointed out that this is the physical manifestation of ‘getting it done at any cost’ we’ve seen in some projects at work. Which made me realize where some of my discomfort was coming from.
While reading the Wikipedia page I saw the related article for “kludge” which is defined as:
a workaround or makeshift solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend, and hard to maintain. Its only benefit is that it rapidly solves an important problem using available resources.
Something clicked: for work, that’s the definition I want to use (because the company is in extract so making it well is what we need most of the time). Then, reading on, I saw in the section of use in computer science, that hack is often used interchangeably with kludge, but that:
Hack can also be used with a positive connotation, for a quick solution to a frustrating problem.
I have definitely used hack both ways. Beautiful for creative solutions. Horrible when I worry about the insurance premium. And “a hack that works isn’t a hack.” Which I always read a bit as ‘an unusual solution that works is good,’ but, that means you’re muddying the waters. One person’s hack is another person’s hack. 🤦
And it makes me wonder how much connotation we’re putting in the words, because some of these absolutely atrocious kludges we’ve put in at work to hit a deadline were necessary, and some weren’t. The deadline was a sadline and we could’ve taken the time to do it correctly. But if you have internalized a version where delivering at any cost is the highest value, even if it future work will be harder… then that’s the tradeoff we’re making.
I wonder if it would make a difference to stop using the word “hack,” which has both a positive and negative connotation, and instead used “kludge” (or bodge for the brits) and were clear that the only redeeming quality was getting something out the door, and now, right now, we have to figure out how to make it maintainable. Before we move on and create the next kludge.