Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

It's cathartic to read other people who have to go through this.

I'm fighting red tape for my team as we build out a dashboard.

Outlook is packed with 1–2 hour meetings for the next 3 months where so far I'm:

* being asked to load test our system to make sure it can handle the load (of 3 people?)

* being asked to integrate with various analytics platforms so we can alert some poor schmuck at 3 AM in case the API goes down then (it's not a vital part of any platform)

* told to have this run in k8s since everything runs in k8s

* other pedantic tasks by Sys Ops who think everything is a nail and love to argue their points ad exhaustium (or worse, argue why their fav stack is the golden child)

I understand the need for standards and making sure they're followed, but there really needs to be a human element of, "is this truly needed for what I'm trying to do?". So many engineering departments are all about automation, but don't truly think through how much automation is needed, rather than a 1 size fits all approach.

I appreciate that this article comes to the conclusion that the more correct an answer will be, the more complicated it tends to be. I wish more people in decision making positions would understand this.

That's a great idea. I've unwittingly used similar techniques in the past. Now that I know it's a "real thing," I may have to start using it more. Thanks for sharing this!

Being a hedgehog is useful on the journey to domain mastery because sticking to frameworks saves you time and headache compared to not having any frameworks at all.

The 3 stages of domain mastery:

Stage 1 - No knowledge or structure to approach a domain (everything is hard, pitfalls are everywhere)

Stage 2 - Frameworks that are useful to approach the domain (Map to avoid pitfall areas)

Stage 3 - Detailed understanding of the domain (in which you can move through pitfall areas freely and see where frameworks fall short)

Hedgehogs are at stage 2. You move from stage 1 to stage 2 by adopting frameworks; hence, hedgehogs are seen as "thought leaders" because they teach the frameworks that lead MOST people to more mastery. Except when you're at stage 3, in which case frameworks lead you to more inefficiencies compared to your own understanding.

All good decisions must be made by stage 3 persons, but ironically, training is most efficiently done by stage 2 persons. Hedgehogs get more limelight because 90% of the population is at stage 1 and values the knowledge of stage 2 (and can't grasp the complexities and nuances of stage 3).

Many hedgehogs struggle to touch stage 3, and instead see stage 2 as mastery. This is compounded by the positive feedback loops of success - the frameworks save time, it gives them reputation, it allows them to save stage 1 persons from their ignorance, and it's the foundation of their current level and achievements. Frameworks are also convenient and broadly applicable to many problems; detailed domain mastery in contrast is difficult, time consuming, and highly contextualized.

All of this makes it hard to move beyond stage 2 into stage 3.

Oh boy do I hate the term “alignment”. I get the concept of people operating in alignment but giving people veto power (“I’m not aligned”) versus decision power is a disaster.

Hmm, maybe. If someone is making a “universal” suggestion though, I think it would be hard to “wrestle objections”. These individuals probably know all the reasons why you should do X (since that’s their go to advice). Trying to get them to drop their suggestion could possibly backfire.

So when you get a suggestion from such an individual, it seems like an attractive option just to humor them and go build what you wanted to build.