We also had a moment where software engineers were either like superstars and the Elon
Musk and even I don't know, Zuckerberg was looked at as this like cool,
funny, weird geek and these you had these geeks who are all those
billionaires and kind of did all this amazing stuff, but then you didn't look
at kind of the other side of it, of the darkness and the or
even not even the not only in the darkness, the good enoughness, the
sort of it's non flashy, it's not amazing, that's not great. Welcome
to the santhral life, the place where curiosity meets depth and discussions that matter
today. I'm thrilled to have Paula Biowski joined me with the years spent dissecting
the nuances of software culture. In Brilliant, Paula brings an unparalleled insight into
good enoughness that shapes technology and work life. This is the cause of people,
are you familiar with? What's interesting is that Paula's research challenges the false
narratives that we get from Silicon Valley that technology is just this relentless pursuit of
innovation, and it invites us to explore the values of things like maintenance care
and the human element in our high speed, in a high schech world,
so stationed for conversation that's bound to shift your perceptions. Paul. It really
excited to have you on the podcast. I enjoyed envoid your work and enjoyed
your book and middleware, and then also excited to talk with you about all
things around software development and good enoughness and good enough culture. But just starting
off by saying, thanks for joining me on the podcast, Yeah, no
problem, my pleasure. And you said middleware. But my tech and my
book is called middle tech, which is kind of important. But it's important
because middleware. It is a little bit about middleware. So that's not like
it's not about that. But yeah, yeah, that's true. My brain
just kept going to the word middleware for some reason. Yeah, maybe it
should be called middleware. We should stop the press, we should tell the
publishers. Yeah wait, you know. But that's an interesting point though,
because it's like obviously a middle tech company that's working on software development, you
know, so obviously where the tech and the where kind of come together there.
But I think, you know, it's really compelling about this. I
mean, across that there's a ton of things I want to dive into.
But obviously there is this like main idea around good enoughness right yes, as
a kind of overarching theme, and this is something that for the deep audience
deep listeners, I guess you know. I did a conversation with David gray
Waiter and don nappis you a few months ago that was about kind of software
modularity and like the at the end of the production process, and that was
interesting. That's one of the things that David, who was a computer scientist
and now was doing is his graduate work in anthropology, was kind of talking
about and reflecting on this idea of you know, when software engineers are working,
especially in bigger organizations, if they're doing kind of an agile process or
even old school waterfall, that they are, you know, each individually kind
of responsible for a part of the software, but they don't necessarily see what
happens downstream. And this argument was kind of about this question of responsibility,
like, you know, I don't know what it's doing later, not that
I don't care if it does hardware good, but you know, so folks
don't have to listen to that episode to go here. But that's kind of
one of the places I was thinking about with this, like because obviously this
theme of good enoughness is really interesting of like software is good enough to do
to get out, to get shipped, and so I was thinking about that
in relationship to this question of responsibility of what happens when it goes out.
That's a bigger question, you know, I'm gonna ask that. But then
I also want to kind of think about what is what is good enoughness in
the first place, you know, for folks that they're trying to get a
sense of what's happening here. Yeah, okay, well there's I guess my
book touches upon two worlds of good enoughness, and that is the tricky thing
to maybe for myself to try to organize my own field work. I know,
I spent two years at this software company in Berlin, and after a
while I noticed that so too good enoughness. One at play is the goodness
enoughness of software. That software is patchy, kind of shipped out at not
a perfect stage, but it's good enough to go right and it kind of
have bugs, but those bugs can be fixed later. And I could talk
about that good enoughness, and I'd love to talk about that to good enoughness
but another, good enoughness is about really a work culture, so kind of
in the whole anthropology of work, sociology of work, sociology of corporations.
That's it's kind of like that situated of a technography of what it means to
push back against a narrative of excellence at a company, right that or narrative
of excellence that we all work under under the this like capitalist machine that being
perfect being great. You know how many times a lot of our students come
up to us and are super sad about like a bare minimum of the sort
of like or a median grade or something, and you're like, hey,
this is good enough, It's fine, right, But so we're all living
under that, whether that's our students or us or everyone, Yeah, just
just in our society. And I think that this this is also an example
of how good enoughness can be stabilized as a culture of doing. It's not
even doing the better minimal, it's doing so yeah, it's a good and
enough. I think those two words quite seriously. So do you see.
So there's these two forks, and I talk about them too, sometimes simultaneously.
Sometimes one is an example of the other, and sometimes you could take
a few chapters and speak to one and speak to the other form of good
enoughness. Yeah, yeah, no cool. I think it's it's such an
interesting theme and I appreciate the way that that you split those up over it.
It is like part of it is the software itself, the other part
is the work culture, which I think is really important, right, especially
because yeah, you know, and you mentioned this a few times in the
book too, but just we are reeling, i think societally from the Facebook
mantra of like move fast and break things, right, that's like been the
Silicon Valley tech borrow totally be demon innovation at all costs kind of kind of
thought process, and so good enough is a nice interesting foil to that.
Yeah you know, did you notice that? Is that something that you've seen
as kind of a reflection response because you're you're working in Germany, right,
so we're kind of we're not in the US Silicon Valley. So it's like,
is there is there kind of a European difference there? I mean,
I don't like attribute purely to culture, but maybe it is, you know,
is it like what this is happening here in terms of like why that
differences seems so pronounced totally. So maybe I'll even back up Adam and talk
about my fieldwork happened in kind of twenty sixteen, seventeen eighteen and these years
for those of us who don't remember through some COVID fog brain or something.
Then before you know, we were living in a tech environment where there was
only a bit of skepticism starting to bubble up, but you still had these
like the superheroes of tech, the Silicon Valley mecha of like as you said,
move that fast and break things. We had sort of I would think
it was the peak at the time of a lot of social networks that we
were using. It kind of was just starting to be formed. There was
forms of sex skepticism which we still we already have around data privacy, around
social media and what they're doing to us, what they're doing to young people,
blah blah blah. We get that whole, you know, the critique
that we are living in now, But that was only starting to trickle up
at the beginning, right when I was doing my field work. And another
thing is that we also had a moment where software engineers were either like superstars
and the Elon Musk and even I don't know, Zuckerberg was looked at as
this like cool, funny, weird geek and these you had these geeks who
are all those billionaires and kind of did all this amazing stuff. But then
you didn't look at kind of the other side of it, of the the
darkness and the or even not even the not only the darkness, the good
enoughness, the sort of it's non flashy, it's not amazing and it's not
great. So but also I did my field work for at first I went
to the Silicon Valley, right I went, and I was I was there
for a summer, and I was just interviewing a bunch of people on a
different project that I was working on, and I kind of felt for those
of us who did field work in the Silicon Valley. We know it's a
very weird and very specific place that is very technologically solutionists. They love technology,
they believe in technology. They also America, in my opinion as a
non American I'm a Canadian, is also has a culture, a work culture
that is about really excellence and drive and you can do anything, and about
meritocracy and all these things that a lot of I think European work cultures don't
have. And it also reflects itself in even the labor laws in Germany and
in a lot of countries in Europe. So I mean I lived in different
countries in Europe. I did my field work in Berlin, and I met
some expad Americans even who used to be in San Francisco and kind of were
saying, I just can't handle it anymore. Or you had Brazilians who lived
in San Francisco and then also moved to Berlin because they really thought this work
culture is not for me. I can't take doing this, you know,
working from morning to evening or even just trying to really fully believe in our
technology and you constantly have to like repeat slogans of the company and wear company
hoodies and be excited about the like company culture, and it's not work is
not everything in a European maybe context. And I know that's a very big
stereotype, but I know noticed the stereopot type of a little bit at play
in my field. So I'm jumping different topics out of it. But I
hope I answered your question that I think there was a good enough environment.
I think in an European environment and work environment that lend itself to good enoughness.
So yeah, did I answer some of your question today? It definitely
yes. Yeah, you know, you know you're great because like you know,
we'll rab it hole around different different ideas. Yeah, exactly. But
another I think that's a really important point. And yeah, and it's like
I'm not trying to draw to to stark of a contrast there, but I
think it's like, you know, for for the the US oriented audience,
right, just kind of pointing out in the myth of Silicon valid that we've
heard global here. We know, it's like this global mythical place totally,
and to your point, it is this very unique cultural kind of kind of
zone. And so there's that again I'm saying because this is kind of when
I was coming into your work, like that's where I was thinking about from
from this idea of the Silicon Valley perspective. And so uh, I also
felt a lot of resis with this idea of good enoughness as a form of
resistance almost right in terms of you know, to manage aerial practices and to
and but also to bringing forward things like care, you know. And so
I appreciate it the way that your work both kind of brings us into like
science and technology studies, but then also into like work practices and ethics of
care and how people navigate those those different parts of the world. And so
I want to make sure we spend some time on the software development itself because
I I love all these the bigger questions too as part of this, you
know, because that doesn't else. But like, so let's let's just walk
through a little bit of like how good enough happens in middle tech, right?
And so in this case of like both, some areas that stood out
to me was thinking about software as a social process, right, And this
also links to the like I think about the conversation I had with with David
and Don before about the idea of modularity and software development, but you approached
this actually in a quite different way, which I like. And so think
about the like the social dynamics that how this impacts the way that that people
do software in the programming team but also amongst managers. So let's kind of
start there, and like, what does it mean that software is a social
like a kind of a social process, constract practice, whatever, sociotechnical object,
whatever your terms buzzwords you like to use. Yeah, yeah. So
basically we have a few things that make it quite a social object that people
who don't know much about software don't know, and I didn't know going into
it. One is that software gets old. There's something called legacy code.
And if you're not building a new startup from scratch, and you're just like,
you know, an older company like middle Tech, which built mapping and
navigation technology, you are sometimes ten twenty thirty years old. And what does
that mean. That means that you have code that is old and is aging
with you as a company. So the people who are building code are building
on top of other people's code. So you have to imagine like an old
like Google doc that you're just kind of liked to, but you have to
make sure that the other sentences and that Google doc are also like somehow making
sense. And sometimes they don't make sense. You have to kind of what
is called refactor them. You have to like update them to use the language
that you want to use or whatever. But you still have to work with
those sentences. You can't just throw them away. I mean, sometimes you
can throw them away, but that is very shaky. Sometimes your system crashes
because you throw away a bunch of paragraphs in your Google doc. Let's just
use that metaphor, right, So that's one way where you can imagine.
You could even see that Adam wrote this line, Paula wrote this other line,
and you can actually look into the like kind of history of the code
and see that someone who's not even working at the office anymore has written that
section. So this poses a challenge because suddenly you have to work with somebody
who's not there, sort of these ghosts of software past as like sometimes I
like to call it, and if you can imagine, sometimes you have to
be like, ah, okay, I don't get this good enough. I'm
just going to like, finally, how work with this? I don't fully
know what it means, or I don't think you know fully what it does.
Let's just like build on top of this and let's just run this code
and see if it crashes like fingers crossed it doesn't, you see what I
mean? So you can't really fully understand what the layers are underneath you,
and as our companies age, which they are, and we're using them constantly,
and these softwares that are embedded within our system, our whole infrastructure of
everything from transport to ticketing systems to you name it. Then you can imagine
all the years and years of all these ghosts we're working with. So that's
the one layer of good enoughness, of the sort of of the legacy of
good enoughness. You have to work with something and you can't be perfect because
a lot of complexities are coming into play. Does that make sense? Am
I not going too fast? Okay? So that's one way of good enough.
Another way is simply that you have teams working on things simultaneously and you
have to constantly review each other. I don't know, people don't know that
you're kind of code reviewing each other. Again, back to this Google doc
example, you constantly have to review other people's paragraph sentences before pushing out the
code. And sometimes, you know how it is like you just want to
go get a beer with your friends, or you have to pick up your
kids from school, and you just go like, oh whatever, I'm just
gonna review it. Plus you give them a plus two. Plus two is
like the best review. Plus one is like you need to fix something,
and minus one you need to like ditch it, et cetera. So there's
like a review system and sometimes you just go act good enough I'm just gonna
so that way. It's also very social because it's like a peer review,
constant peer review of each other's code, and we know as academics also peer
review is someone is good enough, we're just like, yeah, this could
fly, this could be at a journal. Right, So that's also so
there's many other ways. I'm not gonna get into all of the ways,
but you can start seeing that software is extremely social. And I think in
social relations are not about excellence. They're about messiness, and they're about like
making things work and constantly negotiating, constantly compromising, just like you do with
your friends or your neighbors, your parents, right, that we don't have
perfect relations. So I think once we start looking at that relational aspect of
yeah, of software, then you start seeing okay, well no, it
is good enough. Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean that's a really interesting
point too, because it's like, uh, and you touched on this in
the book too, but like there we have this kind of false idea that
software is this pristine thing. It's like, oh, it is beautiful architecture
and it's like thought out and fully crafted, right, yeah, but your
work kind of says actually, when we dive into it actually is. It's
quite as social as a conversation that's kind of being made as we go,
built on other languages that we're drawing from, you know, totally. Yeah,
And if I could just add to that, Adam, another thing that
I really learned, and this is where it's the term good enoughness came from
the field because in engineering there's a term this good enoughness, and software engineers
have written about good enough software. And also the whole I mean cloud computing
and update culture within the software industry that Internet has brought means that software isn't
packaged into the little CD that we put into our hardware and then it's finished
right before you finish software product, and then you have it. You shipped
it in a CD the way we do a book, right, and it's
quite static as an object. But here now you can constantly update, and
you are constantly getting pings, pings, pings on your phone or on your
computer where software is being updated. It's because you're always in a state of
good enoughness as an engineer. You're always just going like, this is good
enough for now, let's ship it and then we'll see what happens in the
real world. And how it reacts to the software or how software our legacy
code or many layers react with the actual real world, and then we're going
to update it. Right, so that even principle of building software is almost
build into the logic of how we build software today. You see what I
mean? So that good enoughness. If you talk to any engineer, they're
like, yeah, obviously everything's good enough. But if you kind of talk
to a manager who wants to get a client, be like, no,
no, our software is going to be really great, really robust. We're
going to deliver a great product at week whatever, forty four. We're doing
it, We're pushing it out. You see what I mean. So this
is the the also in congruency, and I think, yeah, that's also
that was also a tricky thing about my research with engineers versus my research with
management. That's maybe another yeah did you see your topic? Yeah, yeah,
No, I think let's dive into that, because that doesn't the interesting
and important point where it's like developers encoders that don't and are not working directly
with customers, right, they there's a different level of pressure, right,
or a different level of kind of awareness of they are maybe thinking more sociality
or social socially within their organization, yeah, or with their manager. Right.
But then it's like an external facing person and I've worked, you know,
on client success side of businesses, I've worked on like internal sides,
and it's like and they're very different, right, because you have to your
language does change your thoughts of like how do I interact with my teammates in
a relationship with the consumer customer wants versus I'm just working with my internal team,
So like, yeah, that's an interesting tension there of like, yeah,
how does that play out? We're good enough? This doesn't feel like
it's good enough to the manager sometimes, yeah, or at least they're not
spoken about that way. Yeah, exactly. So there's so many layers that
I it's hard for me to organize this in my mind, but I'm gonna
try. Is that So one thing is that we're thinking, let's let's even
just talk about like engineers themselves. There's all sorts of different engineers. And
the engineers I worked with are quite privileged. Their meat privileged, meaning that
they a lot of them are research and development engineers and they're working at like
a nice stable company. Their research and development engineers oftentimes like don't have this
pressure to push something out at a certain time, and even if they did,
there were also other groups that had to of course have deadlines. They
oftentimes had Basically, their their product is has years and years of history and
it hasn't there's it's an asset for a lot of let's say it's mainly companies,
but it was a navigation system, so basically it's an asset that has
been around for a long time. So it's almost like the client needs them
versus they need the client, if you know what I mean. They kind
of already have a stable market that there there is not much of a huge
pressure. I mean they would have to really mess up to really like be
fired. They they're quite embedded in a lot of systems, so they have
to keep it running at good enough speed. Now going back to the engineers,
there's other engineers in Kiev are now not in Kiev anymore, but Kiev,
Krakhov, Bangalore is Global Seals, which were actually doing a lot of
the let's call it dirty work or the fast coding, and they did not
have this luxury of good enoughness. So good enoughness can be is a luxury.
It's a freedom in many ways to say this is good enough. I'm
going for a beer, you see that moment. A lot of people think
good enough is just about mediocrity and nobody wants to be good enough. But
actually a lot of these engineers are so happy to google work in a good
enough company because they can say no beer time, No, I'm picking up
my kid from school, No I'm going to my kids recital or whatever.
I'm finishing work. Work is not, you know, they're able to do
that. They have the freedom to say that someone in Bangalore who needs to
finish their code reviews or whatever it is that they're doing as an outsourcing company,
has to finish at a certain time, you see what I mean?
So that the good enough has a privilege, and there's different layers of privilege
of depending on what engineer you are, of how much good enoughness you can
allow yourself at work. Yeah, and then the manager question, which is
another work and they don't like the term. Of course, they don't like
the term good enough. And also a few managers who I spoke to were
also I don't really felt kind of hurt by the term good enough or they
they thought they look they saw themselves as like kind of just I don't know,
taking any advantage of their workers, or like pressuring their workers and not
really caring about them. And that's really not what I wanted to get across.
But it's I think it's a tricky thing because the logic of excellence and
the logic of I don't know, a corporate work that runs on key performance
indicators for those of us who know that term, or you know, you
have to have metrics that make sure that you have enough bugs being squashed and
enough productivity that's happening. All of that logic is there and you and as
a manager have to work under that logic, whether you sit down and listen
to your engineers and see what do you really want? What are you good
at? Of course they do that, but then that logic is still in
bubbling up from underneath, you know what I mean. So I think that's
yeah, that was tricky. That was very tricky to like say, hey,
good enough is great and they were like, no, no, it's
not great, and that you're making me look stupid, you know. So
yeah, that was hard. No, that's it's interesting too because it's like
there's this is often that question too, I mean in any kind of like
power differential in higher case, especially at workplaces like this, right, Like
I mean even like the entire rise of the managerial class. Right, Yeah,
there's kind of this this like built in resentment a little bit from the
worker class that's you know, usually under the managerial class. Yeah, as
a question of why do I need to be managed? On the one hand,
right, and it's like, you know, and scrum is like is
one of the methods that we see often in software development, right, yes,
of that you could have the interesting tensions you kind of noted in the
book tour This, like the the managers saw that as a great way to
be able to know what's going on. But then like you know, you
had uh, programmers being like scrum is stupid, Like yeah, basically actually
help us get anything done, you know, And it's like we have to
just either have a daily stand up or whatever it is. And it's like
this interesting back and forth that's also on one hand, like an interesting kind
of forced sociality also, right of, like let's be seen and kind of
share the work that we have coming up. Not that it's saying scrum is
bad, but just like there's an in intension that we do see like different
different individuals like finding it more or less valuable. Yeah, where managers kind
of more uniformly find something like that helpful because that's actually what their work is
is how do we see what's happening? Yeah, theory, how do we
make things transparent? That's a huge Yeah, definitely, that was the huge
issue here is how to make we make something transparent? And we have a
methodology for that. And for those who don't work in the kind of corporate
software, there's these methodologies that help, you know, managers organize their tech
workers, and one of them is called scrum or agile. There's other forms
and other ways of doing things. But a lot of engineers would tell you
they were like, I don't need scrum, I don't need stand ups,
I don't need this. This is all for the manager, whereas the manager
would say, yeah, that's just like the big headedness of our engineers talking.
They actually do need this because without this they'll just be completely lost.
So it's really trying to show your legitimacy of as a worker that I'm okay
without this. And there's this tension that's not a software engineering tension, is
attention and any sort of work struggle, of a power struggle of who has
the freedom to choose right, who has the freedom to work in a certain
way? Yeah, and what is the manager worker relation? And you can
go back to Marx, you can go back to I don't know even yeah,
sort of tailorism, et cetera, and just kind of like app map
all these tensions. I'm not somebody who's expert amount of doing that fully in
this book, but you can see that tensions, especially in one of my
chapters play out on I think it's the one on managing software engineers. Yeah,
it's yeah, managing good enoughness. It's the chapter four. Yeah,
got to manage that good enoughness, you know. Yeah. But I think
that's an interesting point too, because it's like the whenever we're kind of working
with a workplace hierarchy, of the different kinds of like micro politics that can
come in there, you know, it's like that ultimately also shapes the quality
of the software, right. Yeah. And it's like this interesting idea because
since we have a you know today, it's like nobody's surprised when it's like,
oh, you open your computer and it says, oh, want to
download a update? For some software. Great, you open your your cell
phone and ask you the same thing, or it just does it in the
background, you know, to the point we don't even notice it sometimes that
that's just like part of what we do now. Yes, I mean I
remember getting the AOL CDs in the mail, yes, as a kid,
you know, and it's like this this you know, I don't. It's
like that transition is so common now. It's like it's it's feels archaic to
even think about that. But it's like a crazy idea to think that the
software is printed on a CD and then just passed out And honestly, like,
I know this is not related to the work, but just like it
had me thinking about both the making of books which we have and like DVDs
in like film that we do. Like these are also like produced works that
do not get continually updated. I mean they can't. You can have a
second, third edition of your book, you know, but it's yeah,
not anywhere as fast as a yeah sprint, you know, for good reasons,
or a TikTok or whatever it is. Yet you're you're, yeah,
you don't have this flow, this constant waterfall of information that you're constantly updating
yet. But even like when you're finishing writing writing a book, to write
dissertation or thesis or anything, or even a paper for your class, if
you're doing that, it's like they're also still like you. You probably recognize
the good enough feeling, right, It's like, Okay, well I got
to turn it in. Yeah, yeah, you know, no, but
I think good enough this. It's funny because when you're writing a book,
and I'm sure the authors you've spoke to in the past have had identified with
this, and we we identified this. We write about what we know and
we care about. And this is a bit bizarre, but I kind of
realized that just after even just finishing the book. I thought, oh man,
my life is very much like lives to the like logic of good enoughness.
And it's something I deeply, deeply believe in. And I you know,
I mentioned this earlier. I don't know this was off off record or
on record, but that I'm also a musician and I published albums, et
cetera, and I tour and that was a very tricky thing to juggle being
a professional musician and an academic at the same time. And it was always
this constant like this is good enough. I have to this is done.
I have to run onto something else. And that's not just original. If
your parent and you work at the same time, these are two jobs.
These are huge jobs that you're doing at the same time, and you always
have to go, no, this is good enough for now, I have
to pick my kids off from school or whatever. Right, So you're constantly
in this tension of this has to be good enough, right, this,
this has to be enough. There is a deadline, it needs to be
finished. So I think that it's really important to remember that that we're not
all excellent, we're not all awesome. And the term good enoughness, by
the way, comes from actually sort of pediatrics, and there's the few people
in medicine who've actually wrote a paper around the good enough mother and writing about
like what it means to be not perfect, and it's actually very healthy to
actually talk to mothers as doctors. It was kind of a plea to doctors
to really highlight that mothers should not be looked at as excellent, because once
you look at yourself as good enough, you're kind of there's less stress,
there's just tension, there's more understanding of yourself, and that's also plays very
well on your relationship with your child, you see what I mean. So
that understanding I'm good enough, that's okay is very freeing and it is very
relaxing, I guess, and I think that. Yeah, But again it's
tricky because it's also comes from a space of privilege to do that, right.
A lot of people can't do that. They'll lose their jobs, they'll
whatever, it will happen. You know, if you say I'm just good
enough, so I can easy somebody, because that's a critique that comes to
me. Okay, I could say that as a professor sitting in Switzerland,
you know, doing some research in Berlin among like R and D tech workers.
Fine, but like go to yeah, a coding a farm in I
don't know wherever Krakhoof or something and or not crackwoof maybe anymore, but somewhere
else, and then you'll see that that's exactly and you'll see where what happens
there. You can't just say like, ah, this is good enough,
I'm leaving. No, you're gonna lose your job and someone else take your
spot. Right, So so yeah, so that's that's tough. That's the
tough thing. And that's the critique I do get, and I understand that.
I just I want to paint it as it is a reality that I
think also is there that we don't talk about even in the in our privileged,
very privileged societies, you know, Yeah, No, I think it's
it's important, iportant, and like in general, it's I think that oftentimes
social scientists we can get or as social scientists, we can get kind of
caught up in the in the privilege critique where it's like, well, we
shouldn't be talking about something because it's only for a privileged group. But it's
like, well, no, we have to. We have if we're here
to dissect society, we do have to. It's totally fine to talk about
that. And like that doesn't make it, to your point, not real
or not valid, right, It just means that it's it's for a certain
group. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know so
yeah, so totally find there. But just like, but I think it's
an interesting point because I do, I do. We have interesting work too,
I think as social scientists to to kind of give ourselves permissions sometimes to
to like both do research in places that are that can be spots of like
stated privilege or where you know, awareness of privilege because I feel like we're
not supposed to somehow, And honestly, I think that, on one hand,
also might play into a bit of uh, I don't know if it's
a common I don't want to say neuro seas of social science scientists, but
just like this, this concern that we're either not good enough also for the
research, right and or that like as good enough research is like in like
the hardest places, right. Yeah, you know this also falls narrative that
we have, which it's interesting kind of think about the way that like good
enoughness when you say it and think about in any profession like it kind of
you see where it chips at you either if you have it or privilege to
be able to do it or don't you kind of say, well, what
am I doing right or wrong in my own area? You know? As
I think about that, that's interesting way it kind of like seeps into you.
Yes, And it's that's also the I think that's the like I don't
know, it has to do with capitalism. It has to do with like
this, you know, Nancy Fraser talks about the crisis of care in capitalism
and that like care. When you start caring, you're not working hard enough.
You're stopping and slowing down. Right, this is like the notion of
slowing down is somehow, it's a it's doesn't work well in our logic that
we are living in. And I think that that's that's difficult. That is
the difficulty. And I think that's that's something that we should definitely remember.
And I do this work, and I wrote this book just for people to
also look beyond just learning about how software works, but also to understand a
little bit of understand themselves in the world. And I once I did touch
somehow my students who I I you know, I teach it this very elite
business school that I sometimes have a huge problem with is being here at full
disclosure because it's it's people who are living this like non good it's just about
Excellence's about being perfectly the best, but going to a consultancy firm and like
winning, winning when you have to be the best of the best. And
and just to say, actually, guys, you know, to say the
first year, just beginning, first day, students, good enoughness is still
good, and you you there is other spaces you know that you will find
yourself and you don't have to be excellent. And yeah, and that's that's
I think, really really important. But one last thing I want to say.
Maybe I don't know if we have to slowly wrap up or you have
a few more questions, but the second but a thing about also, I
have this little anecdote in my conclusion about you know, one of this good
pie goodbye party to a few of the engineers who are leaving to like,
you know, the non good enough companies. You know, they left for
the big huge tech companies, the Googles and the Microsoft's and the facebooks,
and they were leaving, and then I kind of met a bunch of engineers
who were saying goodbye to them. This was all like a beer guarden in
Berlin, and even I they asked me what my book was about, and
I said, well, it's you know, it's about the greatness of middle
tech because it's really like this space of good enoughness and how good enoughness works.
And they their hearts sank. They really were like, what good enoughness?
Oh no? And you know, like kind of this comparison of these
these people who are celebrated who are leaving, you know, these other workers.
Yeah, they're going to Microsoft, They're going to Google. Wow,
so wonderful. But I'm staying behind, right, I'm working here for another
fifteen years already and I'm still here. You know, this is my good
enough job, and so in some ways it's it does eat at these tech
workers. I want to just say that that I'm not painting this sort of
story of everyone be like, yeah, we have such a good job because
we could just coast around and freeload and like be good enough all the time.
It is a tension within them. It's exactly the tension that you're talking
about, Adam, that affects all sorts of different placepople and different workforces that
they are also struggling with this term that this is hard for them, that
they want to be at Microsoft sometimes because this logic, you know, these
forces of post industrial capitalism work against this logic. So they and they're part
of this logic where we all feel that, you know. So I just
want to say that I felt that among my engineers very much so too,
that the struggle. That's a really important point and I appreciate you bringing that
up too, because you can you can totally see on the one hand,
how the idea can feel uncomfortable because because even like on the one hand,
like if you're in a certain working environment socioeconomic class, you will lose your
job if you're not if you don't do work, that's good. Yeah,
But then also if you're in a more a more privileged class or even just
more like you know, entrenched middle class, it feels like you're not doing
enough. The enough part ironic if you if you're just good enough, like
you feel like I should be more excellent and more better. So it just
show us. It's always kind of pulling us upwards regardless. And that's like
an interesting challenge point that like I think why it's such an effective kind of
lens through which to think about, Yeah, you know, software development,
but I think to this point, like the bigger question about how we do
work in like late in post capras, well post industrial capra es not post
capitalis are not there yet? Yes? Exactly? Not? Yeah? What
the future of like labor is and how this? Yeah, how is this?
Like what potential for emancipation is there? Is there any? And is
this one form of sort of micro emancipation outside of it? I don't know,
it's you're still that's really I don't have an answer really unfortunately that I
don't know, if you know, I also know that middle tech is going
to be replaced. It's not going to stay forever. And I think middle
tech will be subsumed by these different challenges and of you know, different experiences.
I think even in an example, not that I've studied Twitter or X,
but another example when like you know, Elon Musk comes in and like
swoops in and kind of fires hundreds and hundreds of tech workers. That's a
total example of like, wait, why is Twitter still working or why is
X still working after all these hundreds of workers were fired. Well, it
has a lot too with like time and ways in which season engineers were embedded,
and of course a good enough culture. I think that comes out in
different companies and it doesn't have to just be a medium sized company in Berlin.
There's also good enough culture exists, as I also write at the Google's,
at the Facebook's, at the Ex's, et cetera. But then there
are the Elon Musk to come in, like what were these people doing out
with them? Right? So, and I think that it could be it
will middletech be either bought out by another company. Yeah, and then yeah,
somehow and we see also this is also another maybe looking at the future.
My next project is on how engineers are dealing with different tools AI tools
like CHATSBT but also like co pilot, et cetera, and these are or
so this is going to be a huge wave but already starting to really affect
how engineers do their work and how software engineers organized. So there'll be a
lot of redundancies. People will be fired because you know, the AI can
do their job. So that also is going to be tricky of how good
enoughness will be challenged and stabilized through the like kind of yeah production. I've
even been hired to try or tried that. Someone tried to hire me.
This is so funny. They didn't read my book. They like wrote me
an email Adam last week. That was so funny. They were like,
Hi, we're from a large software coming I'm not going to say their name,
and we would love it if you could do some work on how to
up the efficiency of our workers given chatt I mean they read they read like
that idea some work on AI, and they're like, because we could we
heard that AI can like really up the efficiency of our software production. And
I was like, man, did you not read my book? I guess
you did it. Yeah exactly. Anyways, Yeah, well congratulations on getting
I get pitched pitched for work. But that is a that's a that's a
funny point that we're like, uh, you missed the entire human side of
the work. Yeah, I'm not going to help you be more efficient.
No, I want you to be good enough. Yeah, you know.
Yeah, but I think that that's that's a really interesting point because and I
I was curious, and I mean I am curious about like that, because
I know, because you're you're doing this research eighteen you know. And but
obviously like AI is now yeah, mainstream, like you know, Gethub has
their co pilot like you mentioned, Microsoft also ironically has titled co pilot.
Yeah, lazy titling guys. I wanted code pilot. I always thought it
was going to be good, right, code pilot, Like, come on,
guys, put on words. And I thought, really, gosh,
okay, yeah, where's the developer puny. Yeah that's a great point.
Yes, sorry, but these things, yes, you're right, No,
not at all, but like that, like how that also adds to like
the challenge of redundancies of a kind of work, you know, but then
shifting the nature of work itself. And I do think that's a that's a
fundamentally important question. Yeah, because it's it's you know, I've been thinking
about this too, because it's like the first at least consumer side applications of
of AI, you know, came I think for like the the kind of
weird areas, right, Like it helps with creative writing, it helps with
image generation, it can do music stuff, and it can do coding.
And it's like, why are we targeting like not on purpose, not you
know, consumer facing things that are like creative enterprises versus like let's automate traffic
stops to be more efficient. You know. It's like this interesting idea of
like what what the consumer uses of AI were like pitched towards you know,
versus like actually we talked about it's going to help remove drudgery. It's like,
I mean, all of us, who probably you know, many of
us have used some sort of generative AI to like either help us put a
paragraph together or correct as sentence versus few ideas, and then like everything comes
out like I would say, yeah, mediocre, definitely, definitely, you
know, because it's the hours of the internet, so it's like it's not
not going to be great. But like, so, yeah, I guess
I'm curious like your thoughts on this too, both as a musician and as
as a researcher. It's like, isn't that it's curious to me, like
what the what the consumer applications are or the enterprise applications because it's also this
is like how do we help improve efficiency across like the development of pipeline And
it's like it's funny because it's like a technological solution to to something that's a
social problem. Yeah, and actually you do say that, you say this
summerre too, like that's part of the part of the point of your work
is to help us be like we stopped try. We can't be using new
technology to solve old technology problems because they don't do that. Yeah, that's
not that's not how these work, especially when they're they're social problems. So
what does that bring up? Gosh, yeah, it's hard to say.
And also why these creative realms are being tackled, Like I think that I
don't know, maybe this is just me thinking that this is like non creative
people trying to try to capture forms of creativity and like hone them for themselves
so that they can be creative maybe because and once you see, like engineers,
once I did, I did a little pilot study and I looked at
how engineers are using copilot and which is for those who don't know, like
the AI owned by Microsoft on one of the main AI tools, encoding,
and it really was in the non it's always in the non creative moments are
the very like let's even not call them non creative, like the very mundane
and very mechanical things that that actually it's good at. But the creativity of
really like fully like designing something well or trying to understand how to refactor a
whole section of your whatever your piece of software that you're building, you kind
of have to like be a bit yeah, you have to be a bit
creative, and you have to There is a human aspect that's about planning,
right about trying to figure out how the repercussion of what you're building will look
like in the future and look at all sorts of different contingencies that an AI
sometimes doesn't at ye at least yet doesn't understand how to do that. And
it's a little bit with also music when you come to understand when you start
listening to AI generated music. I find musicians do see the difference. A
lot of non musicians kind of are like, ah, no, I don't.
I don't see the difference to this. But I think in a long
run, the sort of the way in which music stays with you and the
way in which it becomes part of your sort of soul and you sing the
lyric and you you know you want it to be with you for a long,
long pot time. When you when you hear a good, good piece
of music that you really like, then that has to be created by somebody
that touches you some way, I think. So I feel more that when
stuff needs to stay for a longer period of time and be there with us
and kind of touch us in some way. That could also be robust software
that makes sense for all sorts of systems and whatever, all sorts of hardware
and whatever it is you're building. You have to have a way on which
you can plan that and understand its longevity. Does that make any sense?
So I would say that like that ability to like make something stay is not
really yet there with AI and I don't think it could be. Yeah,
I don't know if that madey sense. Yeah, I love. I mean
it's it's like it speaks a bit to the idea of stickiness, what's going
to make something stay. There's actually there's a quote I want to read from
your book, Oh to get to as part of that fancies having, because
it really stood out to me because it's it like speaks to these and it
actually this is the now it was in my head because this is where it
has the idea of like new and old technology, but it speaks to a
lot of the ideas that we've been talking about so far. That and this
comes like right right before you're afterward and basically you know, you say so.
While our past was rooted in expansion, in the demand for bigger,
better, and greater, it is my hope that the skills and tactics of
good enoughness will be necessary to build a livable future. Resistance to narratives capitalism
can include care, compromise, balance, safety, contentment, and collegiality.
And knowing how to be good enough give us the skill to maintain our infrastructures
and keep them running and stable. Accepting a good enough work culture can be
productive as it leaves time for the realignment of power relations, the reconfiguration of
what is important at a given moment. And you know, while while I
aim to illustrate the overarching need for managers, workers and software users to accept
the inherent bugginess and lethargy of working in technical systems, it's really my hope
to get us out of the mindset that traps us into thinking that new technology
will save us from the old one, and doing so it can help us
embrace endurance over newness and maintenance over repair over quick innovation, and prepare us
for a highly adversarial world that is to come. A ton of good stuff
in there. So thank you because that encapsulated thinks such such the import of
this work and so something else you're saying that there's the stickiness from the AI
that's not quite there, but also this idea of like we're we're so obsessed
by the shiny object that like we we are roads or crumbling. Yeah,
you know, it's like we don't actually think there's no value, don't We
don't place sexiness on maintenance and endurance, but like that's really what makes the
world work. Yes, definitely, I can go to work, yes,
to invent the new thing exactly. Yeah, definitely. I think I don't
know if I could add anything that I think that was. I tried to.
It's one of my last sentences was that, like the last the last
part of my right before the afterwards. It's it's, it's it towards the
end. Yeah, so I really tried to like craft this, you know,
this conclusion, conclusions of the conclusion, and yeah, I think I
can't. I don't know how to add to that basically because which is good.
Well, I wrote that. That's nice when you read to me like,
oh that's cool. Actually, maybe I'll ringe in five years, but
I'm still not cringing. I guess I hope not. No, I mean
no, because I think I was beautifully written and like that's I mean,
it stuck out it up that I wanted to. I wanted to read it
because I think there's there's so much here in terms of like to our point
we're talking about, there is this dialogue between care versus speed. Right,
you're like working versus care and like that that's the Nancy Fraser moment that you
mentioned before, the tension between those ideas. But then also I like this
idea that good enough this because we've been talking a lot about it, how
it's like it feels little, it feels a little cringey to the software developers
or managers. But here you're kind of saying it's actually a skill, you
know, work environment to think about like and how we think about operating and
setting up our world. And you know, you point out again here the
value of that is that because it access helps us think about things like endurance,
maintenance and keeping things going right yes, versus just like what's next,
what's new? Yes? And AI I think has that exact problem, right,
It's always about what's next and what's new, and not like let's make
sure things actually work. That's true, that's interesting. I would be another
people who are interested in this area. You could look into Andy Russell's and
leave Vinzel's work on maintenance and repair. There's this like group of people called
them maintainers. That's a kind of a network of Yeah, I don't know
what you've probably had experience, did you, Yeah, the maintainers, and
they're like researchers and advocates for people that care about a whale well maintained world.
I guess that's their like mission statement. So it's cool you could look
out their their work, and I think that there are a lot of people
just really trying to put our focus away from the shiny and new. You
can look about like the deep growth movement and sustainability studies and like just trying
to Yeah, it's it is quite hopefully about sustainability is really this idea,
although good enoughness can come off as like sloppiness too. That's another And that's
the thing that I haven't really I guess I haven't really I see that there's
there's a problem in that notion, and I still haven't figured it out because
on one hand, it's about care and about maintenance. But it's when I
talk about it sometimes about compromise, right, saying like I can't care enough
about this anymore. I have to go right, I need to compromise on
the quality of this because I have to do something else. So the well
maintained well maintenance also about slowness and slowing down. And sometimes good enoughness is
about moving fast, But it's not about moving fast because you want to like
build the newest, shiniest app It's like really about made moving fast because you
don't fully have time to care about this. You have to care about something
else, and that could be about your own well being. You're being of
good friend, doing a big good mother, being a good boyfriend, whatever
it is that you want to also care about, you see what I mean.
So it's about like, yeah, that shift that we're constantly doing.
That's not only about work. We are a multiple of things, right,
So yeah, anyways, so I hope that that kind of makes sense.
Yeah, well totally. I mean it's like it encapsulates that idea that like,
you know, the original use of the word economics like Greek or costs
is actually for managing one's home, right, And so it's like reminds us
that work is like it's the work life balance, you know, fake idea,
right that like they're somehow separate, and it's like, no, we
have to always manage all of them, yes, and life of course.
Yeah. So I think that that's a great point too, where it's like,
so it's also a good question that you raised there too. So if
listeners watchers, if anything jumps to your mind in terms of this idea of
like is there attention or challenge with this idea that good enoughness also feels slow.
How do we think about that? Right, because I think you're you're
right where it's like it can be moving quickly, it can be moving slowly.
It can be moving with care for one thing or with care for a
lot of things. And that then, like you know, and depending on
how you're looking at it, right, that could feel sloppy, but you
can also feel like super efficient depending on you know. So it's like it
is about a point of view too, I think in terms of both an
intent of what's one trying to accomplish and also you know, what does someone
else seeing said person trying to accomplish, you know, in that moment.
So I think there's it's always a three D moving piece, right, It's
like always going to be kind of you know, one person's one person sloppy
is another person's efficiency. But I hear you in terms of like, is
there is there a way to talk about what's happening here that captures like but
the that still also feels good because it seems like good enough. As people
have we have to like get to the point of saying, oh it is
a good enough sexually okay, good enough is good because you feel like it's
like that. So there's an interesting, interesting tension there. Yeah, exactly
of what that is. Because you're right, because overall is actually a positive
thing. Yes, but for a lot of people it's and yeah, and
a lot of people it's not positive. It's not enough. You know this,
this tent should between the term good good, the word good and the
good word enough, and it's constantly isn't enough. No, it's not enough
for some people. It is enough for me, it's good enough. For
others it's not enough. You know. This is funny, Yeah, and
it's yeah, I don't have an answer that I think you're We're constantly going
to be like jumping between unless we like, yeah, anythink really slowed slowed
down? Maybe I don't know, or really I don't know. I don't
have I think this is like moves into also like sort of self help territory.
And Abram Albert wrote a book also called good Enough that's more about like
the good enough term and from as a philosopher. He wrote a book.
It's also out with Princeton University Press. So I also recommend checking that out
if you're interested in the term good enough in our life as a sort of
philosophy and as yeah, so it's not an ethnography, it's not he's not
an anthropology, but also maybe worth checking out totally. Yeah, we're okay
with all sorts of thinkers on this other shoe good. It's I've trained more
in sociology, So am I really through? I don't know, but yeah,
my partner's an anthropologists and he he told me that there's it's a joke
if you spend like two weeks in a field. So I really learned the
beauty of very long term field work where you kind of very much fueled your
whole body within the field. And I really found my hat to like all
anthropologists who who spend a long time in the field. Oh yeah, I
mean it's funny because I will say on the flip side that like, I
both like that, but also I really value people that are able to do
Rabbi ethnography and like they're able to do it quickly because it's like because we
the work demands, like they both are valuable and they both we both have
we have to do both, right, Yeah, that's true, that's true.
And some people, yeah, some anthropologis can't say okay, this is
good enough. They keep going, but I think, yeah, yeah,
it's true, so true that there's something for one to each your own and
one has a purpose in the other as well, and the one can uncover
a lot that others can't. So that's also interesting too. Yeah for sure,
no, hey, holdism, it all works together, you know,
it's like, yeah, I mean I would say fifty percent of the time
on the show, I'm not only the anthropologist, and that that's on purpose.
Actually this is like, so it's because the point is like, how
do we get how do we get other thought leaders and folks interested in social
sciences, and so that's so anthropologists of social scientists, like sometimes I guess
sometimes I have the after life is your anthro life? Sometimes Adams your Yeah,
Adam's cash, she has a title. I guess Adam's after life Adam
nice? Exactly Cool. Cool, I mean that's there's there's always more.
You know that too. Yeah, it's work, who knows, but cool.
Paula, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you hopping
on and I'm excited to get the book into the the eyes and ears of
audience members. So we'll have a link to it in the show. Notes
and yeah, so I'm excited to see what you'll come up with, obviously
in the AI space after this and see how that goes. It's kind of
scary, but I think interesting. No, it was really nice talking to
you, and you're such a great listener and I really like listening your podcast
because you really read our books, which is crazy and a lot of people
don't do that. And it's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you
so much. Awesome cool. Well, many thanks and we'll we'll see ye,
take care, happy reading. Let's a wrap on today's discussion with Paula
Biowski on the nuances of good enough and software development and beyond. Thanks so
much for joining me on the podcast today, paul I've really enjoyed the conversation
with you. Yeah, we journeyed through the complexities of maintaining balance, care,
and compromise in the fast paced world of technology and development. This conversation
not only sheds light on the tangible aspects of coding culture and workplace dynamics,
but also invites us to rethink our relationship with a never ending pursuit of excellence.
As we close this episode, let's carry forward the idea that sometimes being
good enough doesn't signify mediocrity, but a mindful acknowledgment of our limits and priorities,
both in our professional and personal lives. So thank you for tuning in
out. This has sparks of reflections on how we can navigate these demands of
our increasingly digital world. Stay curious and we'll see you in the next episode.
I'm Adam Getwell and you're watching this Anthra Life.