First things first, if you do not know what is ACM Queue (or even worse, do not know what ACM is), click on the links provided. ACM relatively recently has reformed and now presents articles by industry experts, especially in the Queue magazine (you get an article from Queue with every Communications of the ACM magazine but there is more, much more). (disclaimer – while I am a paying ACM member, I make no profit or have no further affiliation with the organization (i.e. I am not an official Ambassador).
With that out of the way, let’s focus in the article in question. The author is Bridget Kromhout, currently working for Microsoft. The main idea of the article is that solution to difficult, seemingly technical problems, can be best resolved by examining the interactions with others. The main ideas discussed therein are the following
- Tech is not a panacea
- Good team interactions: Build, because you can’t buy
- Tech, like Soylent Green, is made of people
- Good fences make good neighbors
- Avoiding sadness-as-a-service
The article is extremely well written. One thing I liked the most is that it includes links to definition you might or might have not heard. The key take away idea of the article is that we tend to think technology and enforce technology rules in an increasingly complex distributed system world, whereas the key is communication between individuals and teams, peers or otherwise. It also coins a phrase that unfortunately will ring true for a lot of people in the audience of this blog “on-call PTSD” and even manages to kill one of my favorite interview questions, and these are only the first two pages. The article also states “we succeed when share responsibility and have agency” – Amen to that, personally I have seen more than a few dysfunctional environments where responsibilities were shrugged off routinely. So to sum it up (and keep this review proportional to the length of the article), Bridget states the value of communication, brings in a ton of references to support her case (making the article simultaneously well research but not falling into the trap of being esoteric) and, at the same time, emphasizes the need of technology. Highly recommended reading!
Athanasios Kostopoulos 