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Comment by vishnugupta | Hacker News Reader

"I have written this maxim a few different ways, but it is worth writing again: no army can help but recreate its civilian social structures on the battlefield."

Interesting to see Conway's law show up here. Companies tend to ship their org structure in a product.

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I think Conway's law is more interesting. It seems natural that networks of human relationships would mirror each other when the same groups of humans translate themselves into a new context.

Whereas the structure of technological products is a "different thing" than the human relationships that created it, it's less obvious that it would translate across that boundary.

> “structure of technological products”

Unless the technology is glued together with ad-hoc systems using email, slack, Dropbox, and the like. At least that’s my experience in small businesses.

Reminds me of the whole "Python is for Brahmins" stuff at Microsoft India office.

Looks like it was a satire? I couldn’t find any authoritative sources on it.

https://www.m9.news/social-media-viral/viral-microsoft-caste...

What? Can you explain?

The was a lawsuit that they only allowed favoured castes to use Python.

I think it’s about software engineers, who are supposed to be impervious about effects of caste structures and hierarchy, judging programming languages from the caste lens.

That is my interpretation, please don’t hold me against it

Someone once told me Indian software companies deliberately hold "secondary" staff like support etc under worse conditions than engineers (smaller monitors, less windows on walls, etc), because there was some law that said if they would get the same treatment, they would be eligible for same pay.

So they made sure the treatment was obviously inferior.

So, no idea but the Python restriction might have been only one more deliberate hardship on some poor folks.

If someone knows something more accurate, happy to learn.

The exact quote "python is for brahmins" brings up top links on incels.is and 4chan, so perhaps OC's character is something worth dismissing.