I would counter with it's easier to fix bugs, improve performance, pay down technical debt than it is to fix consensus, stakeholder buy-in, and strategic direction. So even though good code, design, and architecture isn't easy it's still the easy part in a relative sense.
I did not mean to imply that consensus, stakeholder buy-in, and strategic direction are easy, or even that they are easier than writing good code. My point is just that the code part is not easy either. I think the article's point that "if good code was easy, we'd have amazing software everywhere instead of crappy software everywhere" is a very good one. The average code that gets written is horrendous, interviewing people who are presently employed and struggle to write a for-loop makes this really apparent.
Fixing bugs, improving performance, paying down technical debt all require this as well, which makes them significantly more difficult to actually implement.
That’s because fundamentally you need those strategic items to have space to do those particular detail items. If you have the best strategy and no execution, you can probably hire for that. If you have no strategy and decent execution, you are driving the Titanic into the iceberg.
