Abstraction
From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man — the function of his reasoning mind.
-Ayn Rand
We abstract every day.
We aren’t staring at our desk under a microscope looking at the dust and bacteria on the surface. We aren’t thinking about where the electrons are in the atoms that make up the cells that make up us. We don’t think about how computers actually work when we’re sending emails. We don’t think how keyboards, monitors, processors, and phones work. We don’t think about how each item we use is made and manufactured via chemical processes enabled by a global trade network. We simply can’t be thinking about all these things at once. We have to abstract out of them to get anything done.
A leader’s job is to constantly replace themself. Translation — a leader’s job is to constantly abstract themself. A leader needs to be thinking about the high level strategy. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get into the weeds and completely understand their product and customers. It means that they are aware of what’s going on and are thinking about the future and making sure the ship steers the right direction.
If everything is going according to plan, the captain of the ship shouldn’t be launching the cannons and setting the sail. With a small crew yes, but at scale — the captain of the ship should be attentive to wherever needs the most help and push there. When that’s taken care of, the captain needs to steer the ship in the right direction and make sure there’s cohesion in the ranks.
Few professional sports players study the physics of why what they do works. Basketball players may make miraculous plays in the moment, and when asked what they were thinking, respond “I put the ball in the hoop!” That’s what we’re all doing throughout our day. Our subconscious dribbles and enables our jukes, while we put the ball in the hoop.
Abstraction is important in product development. You need to create ingenious abstractions that seem obvious in retrospect.
Thinking about the customer is the ultimate abstraction. It gets you out of the weeds to see the forest. Of course you can like photos and comments on social media. Of course you can share posts. Of course what’s liked and shared the most, more users see. This and a million other features now seem obvious. It’s what people wanted. So much so that right after they were created, they took off and others copied them instantly. But there are hundreds of ways product managers design products until an executed idea takes off.
Product needs to distill tasks to engineering in a consumable manner. Product specs should abstract out of the unabridged feedback so engineering can focus on the core problems.
When engineers interact with clients, they sometimes get caught up in nomenclature. Clients often don’t understand engineering and how products work on the back-end. To clients, engineering should be magical and so should products.
That’s all most people want at the end of the day. Something that works. Abstraction is fundamental to companies. Abstraction is fundamental to life.
