Best Practices

Many of today’s “best practices” have been drawn from long-established internet companies like Google. However, the problem with copying their current practices on the basis of their success is that most of those companies found near-invincible business models that basically printed money, and so almost any organizational or management practice developed or selected at random likely would continue to be “successful” to some degree. Without much in the way of selective pressure, I think the practices and cultures that have developed at these companies more often reflect optimizations for the benefit of various decision makers rather than optimizations for actually creating something great. The most obvious example being the size of the organizations themselves, which I think is much more often the result of the benefits that accrue to the hiring manager for having more “reports” than to any actual relationship with capacity, ability, or velocity. ¹

Does the above ring true to you? It does to me. The author goes on:

The qualities that make a good engineer are often the same ones that create a good engineering organization. Both start with deep understanding as the basis for innovation – cultivating the curiosity to look inside the black boxes.

Will the age of AI erode the number of people cultivating the curiosity to look inside the black boxes? When AI makes everything easy will most people live on the surface? Maybe so, but I also think it will ignite curiosity. The fun will be in seeing how the curious and intelligent work with AI to accelerate progress.

---