Separating the Worker From the Work: And Other ”Not Great” Ideas.

After ”The Company Is the Company” Last Week. The People Are the People, This Week.

Talofa reader,

I’m hitting the late Wednesday publishing mark so often I might as well make it official. Apologies to myself, and you the reader for missing our Tuesday slot.

This week I think I may actually write a non essay-length edition and just speak on what was top of mind for me this last week. As you’re probably aware Amazon have been going through their latest round of layoffs this past couple weeks, so it’s been a tough space for folks at work.

I was one of the lucky ones.

The Worker and the Work

Last week “I said what I said” because the game is still the same, and this is the nature of the beast - so I could always be next. But I read this piece recently by Baldur Bjarnason called “Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies.” He talks about how inextricably linked the worker is with the work. He describes software companies and developers and code, and how the mental models (theory) of the software - how it's built and how it works - come from the developers who thought about, coded, tested and watched a project grow. That if you "Replace enough of the programmers, and their mental models become disconnected from the reality of the code, and the code dies." I thought this idea, and the way Baldur lays this out about the link between worker and work, was brilliant.

But not just for code. For all work.

The Only Constant Is Change

When people come together, those are a lot of unique views and perspectives¹ - sure some of the knowledge may be redundant, but the experience of that knowledge (which is my definition of "wisdom" i.e., knowledge from action) is unique. A piece of work comes together like only it can, with those specific elements involved. Even the way we work together depends on the people and processes involved, and anything different in those elements, changes the dynamic, the "vibe," and ultimately the outcome of the work. Have you ever lost a teammate, or manager, or had them change a policy at work and suddenly (maybe more like "eventually") the work environment suffers? The same amount or quality of work becomes harder to deliver, eventually slipping, and before you realise (or maybe you're watching it the whole time with popcorn in hand cos you've seen this movie before) it's snowballed, and work's no fun, people avoid the office, and it all falls apart to the point where you and a few others have started shopping your resumes around.

The Bad News

This last week, someone who was instrumental to me coming to Amazon, who convinced me the AWS role wasn't just another corporate gig, that it wasn't “brown cladding”² or, to use my good German friend's description, "getting the brown guy to sell to brown people" - didn't make it through this round of layoffs. And that sucked. He really believed in this work we're doing, heading into the Pacific Islands, and trying to bring the same opportunities for cloud technology, digital transformations, and tech careers to people who look like me. He'll be fine; he's a weapon and pretty highly respected and talked about by literally everyone who knows him. But we lost a piece of the team puzzle. It's funny because we had a catch-up when the layoffs were first announced, and nobody knew anything, and I asked him "what do we do?" and he said "we keep going! we've got a mission and we keep going."

Anyway, that was at the top of my thoughts this past week. How the work is linked to the workers, and the impact of losing those people, not just to the work, but to the team environment they helped create and were a part of.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you in the next episode.

Learning

Things I’m actively studying or learning this week…

• Studying for the ‘AWS Certified Security - Speciality’ certificate - 51% through the course, Site-to-Site VPNs and Endpoints this week.

Building

Things I’m building or working on this week…

• Hashicorp Packer + Proxmox for Cloud-init VM images for the Home lab, this week - still working on this.

• Setup my Proxmox lab for some K8s refresher and infrastructure work.

Interesting Reads

Articles or other writing that stood out to me this week…

• Another one by Abi Noda -

  What Distinguishes Great Software Engineers?

Community

Other projects in community I’m working on…

• Pasifika Tech Education Charity - Providing Tech Learning Opportunities for the Pasifika Community.

• Pasifika Tech Network - A Network for Pasifika Tech Professionals & Learners.

1. Diversity arguments aside for now ;)

2. A token gesture in hiring a person of colour to tick a box and look “socially responsible” but have zero intention of matching the gesture with an actual socially responsible change.