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Power Enabled Hypocrisy
Doing great work is extremely difficult when power trumps intelligence in the workplace.
The Grand Game of Software Engineering is a rare practical example of a technical meritocracy where less qualified and generally inexperienced neophytes enter and gradually work their way up the ranks from generic pawns to powerful niche fitting power pieces.
We, for the most part, look after each other and bring each other up through a blend of gentle recommendations and nuclear war style exchanges on everything from choice of operating systems and programming languages to the holy war surrounding tabs or spaces in code indentation¹.
It’s easy to recognise experts in our various fields through their choice of attire (i.e. what’s written on their t-shirts), style of hair (short, long, dyed, platted, or indeed missing), size and aspect ratio of monitor (even refresh rate too), or even the decals that may be present on their laptop (and whether it’s made of aluminium or not²).
We look to each other for both inspiration and technical detail which, at least to me, describes the utopian case of the Grand Game where we are continuously curious and continuously learning.
Hell Is Other People
However, as with most political, economic, or generally social systems that inevitably…
