As a manager, I want to tell a team what I need and they make it. Is that too much to ask? It depends what you mean by “tell.” Without the information we need, work is like “Bring me a stone.” In this game, the Boss says to the Worker, “Bring me a stone.” The …
Software is completely clockwork at the scale of one function, and completely complex in production.
In any large enough company, there are front-line workers, management, and executives. Executives set direction, management sets up the situation for the workers, and workers do the labor. Workers do the company business every day, providing capabilities to external or internal customers. Management gets them the tools and training they need, for today and for …
Code is like a coastline: the closer you look, the farther from here to there. Can we diminish this effect?
What’s more valuable, a big old company with assets, or a small nimble company with ideas?
Functional stupidity is: don’t self-reflect, don’t ask why, and only think about what we ask you to think about. This can be good in corporate-land. It is a disaster for software.
With increasing variety, each newly created incentive is weaker.
Yet disincentives get more powerful.
Standardization turns a craft into a knowledge-based industry, says Tiago Forte. Has that happened to software, with open-source libraries as standards?
“Plants are movers…. Plants grow to where they’re going.” Frazier, P. & Jamone, Lorenzo & Althoefer, Kaspar & Calvo, Paco. (2020). Plant Bioinspired Ecological Robotics. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 7. 10.3389/frobt.2020.00079. This is a keynote written originally for a private company. I’ll do it at conferences, including YOW! in September 2020. Short bite: In …
