Comment by PakG1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PakG1 | Hacker News Reader

What is fascinating to me about technical people is the particular subculture that sincerely believes that technology will solve the people problem. I recently got into a long thread argument with someone on HN about this. The person was adamant that people problems can NOW finally be solved by designing technology to be able to handle adversarial and incompetent actors. But the problems that such software tries to solve are tightly defined in scope and cannot deal with actually messed up people or organizational problems. Unless engineers are willing to acknowledge people problems, they will keep banging their heads against the door when the organization isn't doing what it's supposed to do.

But it's far easier to acknowledge the people problem first and see if there is a solution for that, rather than trying to ram technological solutions through a people-shaped hole. And if the people problem can't be solved (i.e., it will often involve a change in culture and leadership style, or else a change in leadership, both of which are difficult), it may be best to give up anyway and wash one's hands of the whole mess. In which case, one just sits there going through the motions to pass the day and collect the pay. If they're motivated, they'll find another job, rather than try to fix the mess, and they'll likely be happier doing that too. This is also why it takes a certain non-technical skillset combined with technical skills to succeed in leadership roles. It's a completely different game to play.

I was watching some interview long ago when the guest hit it square on the head. My guess is that it was Joel Spolsky, but only because no other names come to mind as being plausible.

Essentially the rant goes: So all of these people who were not particularly good at people skills in high school go into a career where they think people skills won't matter as much, and check out for 4 years while their fellow classmates are honing their interpersonal skills in one of the most intense personal growth periods of a young adult's life.

Then they graduate, get out into the world and realize that it is all people problems, and now they're even further behind their peers than when they went into college.

Then it begs the question: how do you recover out of this mindset in an increasingly disconnected world?

Self improvement and open mindedness.

Being friendly, honest, and learning when to keep your mouth shut (biggest mistake when I had engineers chat with customers) is more than enough to keep everyone happy.

Honestly, I think finding a non-software project to volunteer on is a good start. About half of my better acquaintances are landscapers because that's what one of my hobbies attracts.

Also turns out they don't really like tech for tech's sake. Who knew!

Tech is still a pretty good option though. Having poor people skills but good tech skills means being a not-too-senior IC forever, a job with decent pay and hours relative to other career options.

There’s a funny arrogance in tech around “solving hard problems.” Social engineering is often much harder to do well than coding.

I actually belive that a lot of the world's hard problems have been, in many ways, made worse by this attitude. Fb being so slow and reluctant to acknowledge their pivotal role in polarizing the world for instance.

I’ve also seen the reverse:

What’s presented as a technical solution is actually a process solution to address a people problem.

To be honest this is what I usually see, not what GP describes. I've never worked with anyone who was ignorant of the people problems around them. Interns, maybe.

I would argue that all of the ideology-based advocacy for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is/was advocating to solve a people problem with technology.

Sounds about right. I don't intersect with those folks.

I’d argue it’s a process solution to a people problem:

“We don’t like how bankers do their job or their relationship with government, so the community will create a shared ledger.”

All the discussion around technology is just details of that process change in banking.

It's more along the lines of "most world governments are actively sabotaging their own citizens. This happens for various reasons, from corruption, to dictatorial panic, ... and Bitcoin provides payment while avoiding to deal with them"

Of course that probably is not the concern Swiss banks have on Bitcoin, but it's still what they offer.

> What’s presented as a technical solution is actually a process solution to address a people problem.

A process is a class of technology. Even more so now that many processes are implemented or enforced by computers.

> But the problems that such software tries to solve are tightly defined in scope and cannot deal with actually messed up people or organizational problems.

In many cases the solution comes in the form of "go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script."

For example, suppose that you have regulator captured by construction companies who want construction to be labor-intensive because they're the ones who get the money. The problem here is not that we need technology to reduce construction costs, it's that construction costs are being artificially inflated by regulators.

But now you come up with a technology that allows construction to be performed in a factory and the local part is limited to taking the thing off the truck and putting it in the building, which takes ten seconds and can be done by the truck driver. Can this solve the problem?

Maybe. It depends on whether the incumbents have enough political power to have it banned or made prohibitively expensive. If they do then it won't work. But if they don't, the technology solves the people problem, by removing the problematic people from the operation. Or forcing them to improve their own efficiency so they can remain competitive with the new technology.

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