5. Designing a Platform is Designing an Organization
An ex-colleague of mine taught me the phrase “you ship your org chart”, meaning that the structure of your system in Production usually matches the structure of your organization. In my experience this is true.
Also known as Conway's law, this was the single biggest lesson at my last job (just before it ended). I've come to believe that nearly all code problems are actually people problems.
So for example, we aren't really web developers, we're coders who work around the numerous problems introduced by decades of design by committee. We aren't game developers, we're coders who make forward progress despite a level of wheel reinvention not seen in any other industry. And so on and so forth.
Me? I've decided to take a break from programming for a while to let the churn die down. I'm still listening for possible gigs, but for the most part I'll be working on the other areas in life that I've neglected over the last ~20 years. Maybe get back into art, blog a little, invent something. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of a large savings account or investments, so I'm doing this on faith and relying on the evolution of humanity in these times.
5. Designing a Platform is Designing an Organization
An ex-colleague of mine taught me the phrase “you ship your org chart”, meaning that the structure of your system in Production usually matches the structure of your organization. In my experience this is true.
Also known as Conway's law, this was the single biggest lesson at my last job (just before it ended). I've come to believe that nearly all code problems are actually people problems.
So for example, we aren't really web developers, we're coders who work around the numerous problems introduced by decades of design by committee. We aren't game developers, we're coders who make forward progress despite a level of wheel reinvention not seen in any other industry. And so on and so forth.
Me? I've decided to take a break from programming for a while to let the churn die down. I'm still listening for possible gigs, but for the most part I'll be working on the other areas in life that I've neglected over the last ~20 years. Maybe get back into art, blog a little, invent something. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of a large savings account or investments, so I'm doing this on faith and relying on the evolution of humanity in these times.