On #5: This same thing happened to me. A junior dev came up with an ingenious solution for something that would have taken weeks and been a major maintenance headache going forward. The team had been putting off developing it for months because of that. She proposed the idea to me and asked if it was an awful hack and my initial reaction was &quot;yes&quot;, but then I swallowed my pride enough to add on &quot;..but here&#x27;s how we can make it work&quot;.