In my case it's the lack of documentation about a huge system (ecosystem, I'd rather call it), in contrast to an overengineered methodology and process, which involves mandatory code reviews by people unfamiliar with the code and 6 test phases before production.
If I crank 10 lines of code a week I consider myself lucky, and it won't take less than 3 weeks for them to hit production.
The combination of that with long builds and releases (30min minimum) makes me always have something to do, but I'm always waiting for something to be able to move on (build to be finished, answers from experts, validation by QA...). That's where HN and r/programming kick in.
I sincerely hope this (10 lines of code a week) is hyperbole. I would be fine with 3 weeks to hit production - not everybody works on a SaaS, I've had six months release cycles - but... not writing code?
I've probably not even gotten 10 lines a week at some jobs. One gig was mostly all ad hoc reporting stuff, with a lot of cut and paste of previous impls. Another place I and two others spent a year on a project that should've taken 2 months, I didn't write any new code at all for at least 6 months of that project. Specifically there was a lot of back forth, requirements changes from the business owners, on the part I wasn't involved with, before the project went live.
This was typical for the first 10 years of my career until I took a lead position. Now I work all the time, and I focus on organizing and coaching up my team so I don't have to do as much.
When the code base is bad enough, fixing a bug can take a small code tweak but days to discover and days more to test. Especially if refactoring bad code isn't an option at the time.
If I crank 10 lines of code a week I consider myself lucky, and it won't take less than 3 weeks for them to hit production.
The combination of that with long builds and releases (30min minimum) makes me always have something to do, but I'm always waiting for something to be able to move on (build to be finished, answers from experts, validation by QA...). That's where HN and r/programming kick in.