Greg Wilson of Software Carpentry fame knows how to write a headline. His recent talk Cocaine and Conway's Law is a mine of brilliant ideas and books to add to your reading list. They talk invested me immediately through his excoriation of Mark Andreessen's "Techno Optimist Manifesto" as a part of the Peter Thiel/Elon Musk narrative - work harder and longer, fix all problems via tech. Conway's Law, for those who are unfamiliar is the implicit link between social organisation of a company and the systems that it ends up desiging.

A cornerstone of Wilson's discussion is a paper called "The Three Traditions of Computing" (2008) which breaks down computer science into the mathematical, engineering and scientific traditions. But Wilson proposes a fourth, a humanistic tradition, which is "programming as if people mattered"

It's aim is to explain why people build the software they do and is often viewed as simply "storytelling by those without a background in social science methods". This struck me rather hard. I don't have a background in social science methods and yet I'm trying to tell a story. Should I invest in learning more about social sciences? Well if I do all I need to do is to watch the rest of this excellent talk and make a few notes as a starting point. For anyone who is interested in why we do what we do, look no further. I'll certainly be rewatching and further analysing this video over the coming weeks and months.

This reminds me that I had a brief talk with a friend at the recent Fast Flow conference in London about how I would love to invite psychologists and social scientists into the "Fast Flow" fold a little more, or perhaps I was disappointed that the conference wasn't more human centric but perhaps this subject is wide enough to encompass it's own discussion, it's own group? Watch this space for more thoughts.

Here's a summary I posted to LinkedIn of the three audiences that I feel Human Software appeals to:

🛠️ Engineers seem to relate to Beth and her daily struggles to keep her and her family’s head above water. She does this while under the constant threat of redundancy and being replaced by younger, cheaper consultants and/or A.I.
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🤵‍♀️ IT leaders relate to Chrissie and her need to do right by her bosses, as well as her reports. She also needs to concentrate on her mission and her ambition. The book throws into focus the ethical dilemmas she faces. She wants to make humane decisions while protecting what she believes are the firm’s best interests. In many ways, IT leaders and consultants have struggled the most with the picture the book paints. Bear in mind that this is not a cosy business manual like “The Phoenix Project”. It’s confronting. It’s a fantasy story with what I believe is an important message. If you are an IT leader and the book doesn’t ethically challenge you and serve as a warning, then I’ve definitely failed as a writer.. or perhaps you don’t give a crap in which case you’ll be fine and keep doing what you do!
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⛵ Aside from those two, there is another audience. The non-IT people who don’t have the visceral experience of supporting software systems 24/7/365. These readers have enjoyed dipping their toes into the techie world and coming away with a good story. It gives them something to think about as A.I. continues to dominate the narrative about how we work and how we treat each other at work.

So I'm now stepping back into normal life after a busy six weeks promoting Human Software. Getting some really interesting responses to it from all sorts of reader. There was a lovely, thought provoking review from Jeremy Markey and another from Jan Hartman which gave me pause to consider what it meant for managers to read my book. Human Software is proving hard for caring managers to read because it confronts them with situations where they might have had to make similar calls. I honestly never thought I'd reach Stephen King levels of horror at the first attempt but I'll definitely take that and I feel that managers are reacting more viscerally to the material than engineers are for whom it's more cathartic.

There is an opportunity here to start a discussion around the responsibilities of being a tech leader with the threat of AI, globalisation an offshoring affecting our workforce. Leaders must be more compassionate and not hide behind industry hype or dogma and this takes a level of skill that, put simply, most managers don't consider as important or haven't come across before in their bosses. We must care more as individuals about all of our interactions. Just this week I discovered that my job will be stopping at Christmas - so I was let go from my day job - but no-one had clearly communicated this until, it was up to me to do all the leg work to connect the dots between the managers because they all had assumed that someone else had done it. They collectively didn't think clearly about the human at the end of the message. I'm able to look beyond their failings and see the system that allows this to happen, but I ask them to take personal responsibility to ensure that tricky messages are conveyed with humanity towards their recipients.

Consequently, I'll be spending November studying for the AWS Network Speciality exam and having a bit of fun writing the screenplay (or perhaps the series bible?) for Human Software. If you need a deeply humanistic AWS DevOps and Infra engineer on a contract basis from January then feel free to get in touch :)

Have a great Sunday!

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