WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:05.639 We also had a moment where software engineers were either like superstars and the Elon 2 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:09.800 Musk and even I don't know, Zuckerberg was looked at as this like cool, 3 00:00:09.839 --> 00:00:13.320 funny, weird geek and these you had these geeks who are all those 4 00:00:13.519 --> 00:00:18.079 billionaires and kind of did all this amazing stuff, but then you didn't look 5 00:00:18.120 --> 00:00:23.160 at kind of the other side of it, of the darkness and the or 6 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:25.679 even not even the not only in the darkness, the good enoughness, the 7 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:37.759 sort of it's non flashy, it's not amazing, that's not great. Welcome 8 00:00:37.759 --> 00:00:41.479 to the santhral life, the place where curiosity meets depth and discussions that matter 9 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:45.359 today. I'm thrilled to have Paula Biowski joined me with the years spent dissecting 10 00:00:45.359 --> 00:00:50.000 the nuances of software culture. In Brilliant, Paula brings an unparalleled insight into 11 00:00:50.200 --> 00:00:53.759 good enoughness that shapes technology and work life. This is the cause of people, 12 00:00:53.759 --> 00:00:58.079 are you familiar with? What's interesting is that Paula's research challenges the false 13 00:00:58.159 --> 00:01:02.159 narratives that we get from Silicon Valley that technology is just this relentless pursuit of 14 00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:06.480 innovation, and it invites us to explore the values of things like maintenance care 15 00:01:06.760 --> 00:01:08.359 and the human element in our high speed, in a high schech world, 16 00:01:08.599 --> 00:01:12.040 so stationed for conversation that's bound to shift your perceptions. Paul. It really 17 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:19.280 excited to have you on the podcast. I enjoyed envoid your work and enjoyed 18 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:23.120 your book and middleware, and then also excited to talk with you about all 19 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:26.840 things around software development and good enoughness and good enough culture. But just starting 20 00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:29.760 off by saying, thanks for joining me on the podcast, Yeah, no 21 00:01:29.799 --> 00:01:33.040 problem, my pleasure. And you said middleware. But my tech and my 22 00:01:33.079 --> 00:01:36.400 book is called middle tech, which is kind of important. But it's important 23 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:38.599 because middleware. It is a little bit about middleware. So that's not like 24 00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:42.120 it's not about that. But yeah, yeah, that's true. My brain 25 00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:45.680 just kept going to the word middleware for some reason. Yeah, maybe it 26 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:49.519 should be called middleware. We should stop the press, we should tell the 27 00:01:49.519 --> 00:01:53.560 publishers. Yeah wait, you know. But that's an interesting point though, 28 00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:57.519 because it's like obviously a middle tech company that's working on software development, you 29 00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:00.719 know, so obviously where the tech and the where kind of come together there. 30 00:02:00.719 --> 00:02:04.359 But I think, you know, it's really compelling about this. I 31 00:02:04.359 --> 00:02:06.480 mean, across that there's a ton of things I want to dive into. 32 00:02:06.519 --> 00:02:12.520 But obviously there is this like main idea around good enoughness right yes, as 33 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:17.400 a kind of overarching theme, and this is something that for the deep audience 34 00:02:17.439 --> 00:02:21.319 deep listeners, I guess you know. I did a conversation with David gray 35 00:02:21.319 --> 00:02:25.680 Waiter and don nappis you a few months ago that was about kind of software 36 00:02:25.759 --> 00:02:30.199 modularity and like the at the end of the production process, and that was 37 00:02:30.639 --> 00:02:32.080 interesting. That's one of the things that David, who was a computer scientist 38 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:37.280 and now was doing is his graduate work in anthropology, was kind of talking 39 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:42.520 about and reflecting on this idea of you know, when software engineers are working, 40 00:02:42.599 --> 00:02:45.759 especially in bigger organizations, if they're doing kind of an agile process or 41 00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:51.039 even old school waterfall, that they are, you know, each individually kind 42 00:02:51.039 --> 00:02:53.759 of responsible for a part of the software, but they don't necessarily see what 43 00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:57.960 happens downstream. And this argument was kind of about this question of responsibility, 44 00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:00.479 like, you know, I don't know what it's doing later, not that 45 00:03:00.520 --> 00:03:05.439 I don't care if it does hardware good, but you know, so folks 46 00:03:05.439 --> 00:03:07.800 don't have to listen to that episode to go here. But that's kind of 47 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:08.759 one of the places I was thinking about with this, like because obviously this 48 00:03:08.840 --> 00:03:13.520 theme of good enoughness is really interesting of like software is good enough to do 49 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:15.199 to get out, to get shipped, and so I was thinking about that 50 00:03:15.199 --> 00:03:19.199 in relationship to this question of responsibility of what happens when it goes out. 51 00:03:20.479 --> 00:03:22.520 That's a bigger question, you know, I'm gonna ask that. But then 52 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:23.560 I also want to kind of think about what is what is good enoughness in 53 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:25.120 the first place, you know, for folks that they're trying to get a 54 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:28.840 sense of what's happening here. Yeah, okay, well there's I guess my 55 00:03:28.919 --> 00:03:32.280 book touches upon two worlds of good enoughness, and that is the tricky thing 56 00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:37.199 to maybe for myself to try to organize my own field work. I know, 57 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:40.960 I spent two years at this software company in Berlin, and after a 58 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:45.599 while I noticed that so too good enoughness. One at play is the goodness 59 00:03:45.719 --> 00:03:51.360 enoughness of software. That software is patchy, kind of shipped out at not 60 00:03:51.479 --> 00:03:54.879 a perfect stage, but it's good enough to go right and it kind of 61 00:03:54.919 --> 00:03:58.400 have bugs, but those bugs can be fixed later. And I could talk 62 00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:00.199 about that good enoughness, and I'd love to talk about that to good enoughness 63 00:04:00.199 --> 00:04:04.240 but another, good enoughness is about really a work culture, so kind of 64 00:04:04.280 --> 00:04:09.319 in the whole anthropology of work, sociology of work, sociology of corporations. 65 00:04:09.479 --> 00:04:14.039 That's it's kind of like that situated of a technography of what it means to 66 00:04:14.039 --> 00:04:17.959 push back against a narrative of excellence at a company, right that or narrative 67 00:04:17.959 --> 00:04:23.959 of excellence that we all work under under the this like capitalist machine that being 68 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:26.920 perfect being great. You know how many times a lot of our students come 69 00:04:26.959 --> 00:04:30.120 up to us and are super sad about like a bare minimum of the sort 70 00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:32.879 of like or a median grade or something, and you're like, hey, 71 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:35.680 this is good enough, It's fine, right, But so we're all living 72 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:41.360 under that, whether that's our students or us or everyone, Yeah, just 73 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:45.639 just in our society. And I think that this this is also an example 74 00:04:45.879 --> 00:04:53.000 of how good enoughness can be stabilized as a culture of doing. It's not 75 00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:56.160 even doing the better minimal, it's doing so yeah, it's a good and 76 00:04:56.439 --> 00:04:58.920 enough. I think those two words quite seriously. So do you see. 77 00:04:58.920 --> 00:05:01.439 So there's these two forks, and I talk about them too, sometimes simultaneously. 78 00:05:01.480 --> 00:05:05.120 Sometimes one is an example of the other, and sometimes you could take 79 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:09.600 a few chapters and speak to one and speak to the other form of good 80 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:12.720 enoughness. Yeah, yeah, no cool. I think it's it's such an 81 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:15.560 interesting theme and I appreciate the way that that you split those up over it. 82 00:05:15.639 --> 00:05:17.399 It is like part of it is the software itself, the other part 83 00:05:17.439 --> 00:05:20.040 is the work culture, which I think is really important, right, especially 84 00:05:20.120 --> 00:05:21.800 because yeah, you know, and you mentioned this a few times in the 85 00:05:21.839 --> 00:05:29.079 book too, but just we are reeling, i think societally from the Facebook 86 00:05:29.120 --> 00:05:30.680 mantra of like move fast and break things, right, that's like been the 87 00:05:30.680 --> 00:05:35.839 Silicon Valley tech borrow totally be demon innovation at all costs kind of kind of 88 00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:40.600 thought process, and so good enough is a nice interesting foil to that. 89 00:05:40.839 --> 00:05:44.399 Yeah you know, did you notice that? Is that something that you've seen 90 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:49.480 as kind of a reflection response because you're you're working in Germany, right, 91 00:05:49.519 --> 00:05:53.480 so we're kind of we're not in the US Silicon Valley. So it's like, 92 00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:56.480 is there is there kind of a European difference there? I mean, 93 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:58.959 I don't like attribute purely to culture, but maybe it is, you know, 94 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:00.879 is it like what this is happening here in terms of like why that 95 00:06:00.920 --> 00:06:04.680 differences seems so pronounced totally. So maybe I'll even back up Adam and talk 96 00:06:04.720 --> 00:06:12.079 about my fieldwork happened in kind of twenty sixteen, seventeen eighteen and these years 97 00:06:12.600 --> 00:06:15.480 for those of us who don't remember through some COVID fog brain or something. 98 00:06:15.560 --> 00:06:20.040 Then before you know, we were living in a tech environment where there was 99 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:24.040 only a bit of skepticism starting to bubble up, but you still had these 100 00:06:24.120 --> 00:06:28.680 like the superheroes of tech, the Silicon Valley mecha of like as you said, 101 00:06:28.839 --> 00:06:31.600 move that fast and break things. We had sort of I would think 102 00:06:31.639 --> 00:06:34.480 it was the peak at the time of a lot of social networks that we 103 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:38.879 were using. It kind of was just starting to be formed. There was 104 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:43.439 forms of sex skepticism which we still we already have around data privacy, around 105 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:46.560 social media and what they're doing to us, what they're doing to young people, 106 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:48.079 blah blah blah. We get that whole, you know, the critique 107 00:06:48.160 --> 00:06:51.920 that we are living in now, But that was only starting to trickle up 108 00:06:51.920 --> 00:06:56.839 at the beginning, right when I was doing my field work. And another 109 00:06:56.879 --> 00:07:01.560 thing is that we also had a moment where software engineers were either like superstars 110 00:07:01.639 --> 00:07:05.600 and the Elon Musk and even I don't know, Zuckerberg was looked at as 111 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:10.519 this like cool, funny, weird geek and these you had these geeks who 112 00:07:10.519 --> 00:07:15.000 are all those billionaires and kind of did all this amazing stuff. But then 113 00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:18.319 you didn't look at kind of the other side of it, of the the 114 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:21.879 darkness and the or even not even the not only the darkness, the good 115 00:07:21.959 --> 00:07:25.800 enoughness, the sort of it's non flashy, it's not amazing and it's not 116 00:07:25.879 --> 00:07:29.680 great. So but also I did my field work for at first I went 117 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:31.519 to the Silicon Valley, right I went, and I was I was there 118 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:35.720 for a summer, and I was just interviewing a bunch of people on a 119 00:07:35.720 --> 00:07:40.439 different project that I was working on, and I kind of felt for those 120 00:07:40.439 --> 00:07:43.160 of us who did field work in the Silicon Valley. We know it's a 121 00:07:43.279 --> 00:07:47.920 very weird and very specific place that is very technologically solutionists. They love technology, 122 00:07:47.959 --> 00:07:53.000 they believe in technology. They also America, in my opinion as a 123 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:57.759 non American I'm a Canadian, is also has a culture, a work culture 124 00:07:57.920 --> 00:08:03.639 that is about really excellence and drive and you can do anything, and about 125 00:08:03.639 --> 00:08:07.439 meritocracy and all these things that a lot of I think European work cultures don't 126 00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:11.759 have. And it also reflects itself in even the labor laws in Germany and 127 00:08:11.759 --> 00:08:16.120 in a lot of countries in Europe. So I mean I lived in different 128 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:20.800 countries in Europe. I did my field work in Berlin, and I met 129 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:24.120 some expad Americans even who used to be in San Francisco and kind of were 130 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:28.519 saying, I just can't handle it anymore. Or you had Brazilians who lived 131 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:33.799 in San Francisco and then also moved to Berlin because they really thought this work 132 00:08:33.799 --> 00:08:37.279 culture is not for me. I can't take doing this, you know, 133 00:08:37.399 --> 00:08:43.000 working from morning to evening or even just trying to really fully believe in our 134 00:08:43.039 --> 00:08:48.519 technology and you constantly have to like repeat slogans of the company and wear company 135 00:08:48.519 --> 00:08:54.960 hoodies and be excited about the like company culture, and it's not work is 136 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:58.240 not everything in a European maybe context. And I know that's a very big 137 00:08:58.279 --> 00:09:01.399 stereotype, but I know noticed the stereopot type of a little bit at play 138 00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:05.279 in my field. So I'm jumping different topics out of it. But I 139 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:11.480 hope I answered your question that I think there was a good enough environment. 140 00:09:11.679 --> 00:09:16.399 I think in an European environment and work environment that lend itself to good enoughness. 141 00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:20.720 So yeah, did I answer some of your question today? It definitely 142 00:09:20.759 --> 00:09:24.000 yes. Yeah, you know, you know you're great because like you know, 143 00:09:24.120 --> 00:09:28.000 we'll rab it hole around different different ideas. Yeah, exactly. But 144 00:09:28.120 --> 00:09:31.159 another I think that's a really important point. And yeah, and it's like 145 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:33.879 I'm not trying to draw to to stark of a contrast there, but I 146 00:09:33.919 --> 00:09:35.759 think it's like, you know, for for the the US oriented audience, 147 00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:39.919 right, just kind of pointing out in the myth of Silicon valid that we've 148 00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:43.559 heard global here. We know, it's like this global mythical place totally, 149 00:09:43.679 --> 00:09:46.919 and to your point, it is this very unique cultural kind of kind of 150 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:50.200 zone. And so there's that again I'm saying because this is kind of when 151 00:09:50.200 --> 00:09:54.000 I was coming into your work, like that's where I was thinking about from 152 00:09:54.039 --> 00:09:58.039 from this idea of the Silicon Valley perspective. And so uh, I also 153 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:03.440 felt a lot of resis with this idea of good enoughness as a form of 154 00:10:03.519 --> 00:10:07.960 resistance almost right in terms of you know, to manage aerial practices and to 155 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:11.879 and but also to bringing forward things like care, you know. And so 156 00:10:13.080 --> 00:10:16.200 I appreciate it the way that your work both kind of brings us into like 157 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:20.519 science and technology studies, but then also into like work practices and ethics of 158 00:10:20.559 --> 00:10:24.879 care and how people navigate those those different parts of the world. And so 159 00:10:26.919 --> 00:10:28.879 I want to make sure we spend some time on the software development itself because 160 00:10:28.879 --> 00:10:31.720 I I love all these the bigger questions too as part of this, you 161 00:10:31.720 --> 00:10:35.360 know, because that doesn't else. But like, so let's let's just walk 162 00:10:35.360 --> 00:10:39.759 through a little bit of like how good enough happens in middle tech, right? 163 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:43.759 And so in this case of like both, some areas that stood out 164 00:10:43.759 --> 00:10:46.200 to me was thinking about software as a social process, right, And this 165 00:10:46.240 --> 00:10:50.720 also links to the like I think about the conversation I had with with David 166 00:10:50.799 --> 00:10:54.360 and Don before about the idea of modularity and software development, but you approached 167 00:10:54.360 --> 00:10:56.919 this actually in a quite different way, which I like. And so think 168 00:10:56.919 --> 00:11:01.320 about the like the social dynamics that how this impacts the way that that people 169 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:03.679 do software in the programming team but also amongst managers. So let's kind of 170 00:11:03.679 --> 00:11:07.960 start there, and like, what does it mean that software is a social 171 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:11.639 like a kind of a social process, constract practice, whatever, sociotechnical object, 172 00:11:11.639 --> 00:11:16.840 whatever your terms buzzwords you like to use. Yeah, yeah. So 173 00:11:18.279 --> 00:11:22.879 basically we have a few things that make it quite a social object that people 174 00:11:22.919 --> 00:11:26.399 who don't know much about software don't know, and I didn't know going into 175 00:11:26.440 --> 00:11:31.360 it. One is that software gets old. There's something called legacy code. 176 00:11:31.399 --> 00:11:35.320 And if you're not building a new startup from scratch, and you're just like, 177 00:11:35.639 --> 00:11:39.679 you know, an older company like middle Tech, which built mapping and 178 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:45.240 navigation technology, you are sometimes ten twenty thirty years old. And what does 179 00:11:45.279 --> 00:11:48.279 that mean. That means that you have code that is old and is aging 180 00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:52.960 with you as a company. So the people who are building code are building 181 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:56.360 on top of other people's code. So you have to imagine like an old 182 00:11:56.600 --> 00:12:01.320 like Google doc that you're just kind of liked to, but you have to 183 00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:07.360 make sure that the other sentences and that Google doc are also like somehow making 184 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:09.799 sense. And sometimes they don't make sense. You have to kind of what 185 00:12:09.919 --> 00:12:13.600 is called refactor them. You have to like update them to use the language 186 00:12:13.639 --> 00:12:16.279 that you want to use or whatever. But you still have to work with 187 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:18.360 those sentences. You can't just throw them away. I mean, sometimes you 188 00:12:18.399 --> 00:12:22.960 can throw them away, but that is very shaky. Sometimes your system crashes 189 00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:26.759 because you throw away a bunch of paragraphs in your Google doc. Let's just 190 00:12:26.919 --> 00:12:31.000 use that metaphor, right, So that's one way where you can imagine. 191 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:35.480 You could even see that Adam wrote this line, Paula wrote this other line, 192 00:12:35.519 --> 00:12:39.480 and you can actually look into the like kind of history of the code 193 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:43.679 and see that someone who's not even working at the office anymore has written that 194 00:12:43.759 --> 00:12:46.600 section. So this poses a challenge because suddenly you have to work with somebody 195 00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:52.320 who's not there, sort of these ghosts of software past as like sometimes I 196 00:12:52.399 --> 00:12:54.879 like to call it, and if you can imagine, sometimes you have to 197 00:12:54.919 --> 00:12:58.120 be like, ah, okay, I don't get this good enough. I'm 198 00:12:58.159 --> 00:13:01.559 just going to like, finally, how work with this? I don't fully 199 00:13:01.559 --> 00:13:03.799 know what it means, or I don't think you know fully what it does. 200 00:13:03.159 --> 00:13:07.639 Let's just like build on top of this and let's just run this code 201 00:13:07.639 --> 00:13:09.440 and see if it crashes like fingers crossed it doesn't, you see what I 202 00:13:09.480 --> 00:13:13.679 mean? So you can't really fully understand what the layers are underneath you, 203 00:13:13.720 --> 00:13:18.799 and as our companies age, which they are, and we're using them constantly, 204 00:13:18.840 --> 00:13:24.240 and these softwares that are embedded within our system, our whole infrastructure of 205 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:28.480 everything from transport to ticketing systems to you name it. Then you can imagine 206 00:13:28.559 --> 00:13:31.960 all the years and years of all these ghosts we're working with. So that's 207 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:35.279 the one layer of good enoughness, of the sort of of the legacy of 208 00:13:35.320 --> 00:13:39.759 good enoughness. You have to work with something and you can't be perfect because 209 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:43.919 a lot of complexities are coming into play. Does that make sense? Am 210 00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:46.279 I not going too fast? Okay? So that's one way of good enough. 211 00:13:46.279 --> 00:13:52.519 Another way is simply that you have teams working on things simultaneously and you 212 00:13:52.679 --> 00:13:56.720 have to constantly review each other. I don't know, people don't know that 213 00:13:56.879 --> 00:13:58.840 you're kind of code reviewing each other. Again, back to this Google doc 214 00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:05.519 example, you constantly have to review other people's paragraph sentences before pushing out the 215 00:14:05.559 --> 00:14:09.679 code. And sometimes, you know how it is like you just want to 216 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:11.799 go get a beer with your friends, or you have to pick up your 217 00:14:11.840 --> 00:14:13.879 kids from school, and you just go like, oh whatever, I'm just 218 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:16.919 gonna review it. Plus you give them a plus two. Plus two is 219 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:18.799 like the best review. Plus one is like you need to fix something, 220 00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:22.840 and minus one you need to like ditch it, et cetera. So there's 221 00:14:22.919 --> 00:14:28.159 like a review system and sometimes you just go act good enough I'm just gonna 222 00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:30.840 so that way. It's also very social because it's like a peer review, 223 00:14:30.919 --> 00:14:35.320 constant peer review of each other's code, and we know as academics also peer 224 00:14:35.320 --> 00:14:37.679 review is someone is good enough, we're just like, yeah, this could 225 00:14:37.679 --> 00:14:39.600 fly, this could be at a journal. Right, So that's also so 226 00:14:39.639 --> 00:14:43.000 there's many other ways. I'm not gonna get into all of the ways, 227 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:46.799 but you can start seeing that software is extremely social. And I think in 228 00:14:46.919 --> 00:14:52.320 social relations are not about excellence. They're about messiness, and they're about like 229 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:58.279 making things work and constantly negotiating, constantly compromising, just like you do with 230 00:14:58.519 --> 00:15:01.480 your friends or your neighbors, your parents, right, that we don't have 231 00:15:01.639 --> 00:15:07.080 perfect relations. So I think once we start looking at that relational aspect of 232 00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:09.480 yeah, of software, then you start seeing okay, well no, it 233 00:15:09.559 --> 00:15:13.399 is good enough. Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean that's a really interesting 234 00:15:13.440 --> 00:15:16.720 point too, because it's like, uh, and you touched on this in 235 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:18.279 the book too, but like there we have this kind of false idea that 236 00:15:18.399 --> 00:15:22.320 software is this pristine thing. It's like, oh, it is beautiful architecture 237 00:15:22.440 --> 00:15:26.639 and it's like thought out and fully crafted, right, yeah, but your 238 00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:28.120 work kind of says actually, when we dive into it actually is. It's 239 00:15:28.200 --> 00:15:31.559 quite as social as a conversation that's kind of being made as we go, 240 00:15:33.039 --> 00:15:37.080 built on other languages that we're drawing from, you know, totally. Yeah, 241 00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:39.080 And if I could just add to that, Adam, another thing that 242 00:15:39.159 --> 00:15:41.080 I really learned, and this is where it's the term good enoughness came from 243 00:15:41.159 --> 00:15:48.279 the field because in engineering there's a term this good enoughness, and software engineers 244 00:15:48.279 --> 00:15:54.919 have written about good enough software. And also the whole I mean cloud computing 245 00:15:54.960 --> 00:16:02.320 and update culture within the software industry that Internet has brought means that software isn't 246 00:16:02.360 --> 00:16:06.240 packaged into the little CD that we put into our hardware and then it's finished 247 00:16:06.279 --> 00:16:10.039 right before you finish software product, and then you have it. You shipped 248 00:16:10.039 --> 00:16:11.519 it in a CD the way we do a book, right, and it's 249 00:16:11.639 --> 00:16:17.679 quite static as an object. But here now you can constantly update, and 250 00:16:17.720 --> 00:16:19.600 you are constantly getting pings, pings, pings on your phone or on your 251 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:25.080 computer where software is being updated. It's because you're always in a state of 252 00:16:25.120 --> 00:16:29.000 good enoughness as an engineer. You're always just going like, this is good 253 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:32.840 enough for now, let's ship it and then we'll see what happens in the 254 00:16:32.879 --> 00:16:37.559 real world. And how it reacts to the software or how software our legacy 255 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:41.759 code or many layers react with the actual real world, and then we're going 256 00:16:41.799 --> 00:16:47.279 to update it. Right, so that even principle of building software is almost 257 00:16:47.320 --> 00:16:49.879 build into the logic of how we build software today. You see what I 258 00:16:49.879 --> 00:16:52.960 mean? So that good enoughness. If you talk to any engineer, they're 259 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:56.240 like, yeah, obviously everything's good enough. But if you kind of talk 260 00:16:56.320 --> 00:17:00.559 to a manager who wants to get a client, be like, no, 261 00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:03.360 no, our software is going to be really great, really robust. We're 262 00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:07.680 going to deliver a great product at week whatever, forty four. We're doing 263 00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:08.839 it, We're pushing it out. You see what I mean. So this 264 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:14.839 is the the also in congruency, and I think, yeah, that's also 265 00:17:14.920 --> 00:17:18.400 that was also a tricky thing about my research with engineers versus my research with 266 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:23.200 management. That's maybe another yeah did you see your topic? Yeah, yeah, 267 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:26.039 No, I think let's dive into that, because that doesn't the interesting 268 00:17:26.079 --> 00:17:32.160 and important point where it's like developers encoders that don't and are not working directly 269 00:17:32.200 --> 00:17:33.680 with customers, right, they there's a different level of pressure, right, 270 00:17:33.759 --> 00:17:38.000 or a different level of kind of awareness of they are maybe thinking more sociality 271 00:17:38.079 --> 00:17:41.559 or social socially within their organization, yeah, or with their manager. Right. 272 00:17:41.559 --> 00:17:45.200 But then it's like an external facing person and I've worked, you know, 273 00:17:45.400 --> 00:17:48.720 on client success side of businesses, I've worked on like internal sides, 274 00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:51.720 and it's like and they're very different, right, because you have to your 275 00:17:51.799 --> 00:17:55.240 language does change your thoughts of like how do I interact with my teammates in 276 00:17:55.240 --> 00:17:59.200 a relationship with the consumer customer wants versus I'm just working with my internal team, 277 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:00.799 So like, yeah, that's an interesting tension there of like, yeah, 278 00:18:00.799 --> 00:18:03.039 how does that play out? We're good enough? This doesn't feel like 279 00:18:03.039 --> 00:18:06.839 it's good enough to the manager sometimes, yeah, or at least they're not 280 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:10.680 spoken about that way. Yeah, exactly. So there's so many layers that 281 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:12.680 I it's hard for me to organize this in my mind, but I'm gonna 282 00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:18.039 try. Is that So one thing is that we're thinking, let's let's even 283 00:18:18.079 --> 00:18:21.960 just talk about like engineers themselves. There's all sorts of different engineers. And 284 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:26.519 the engineers I worked with are quite privileged. Their meat privileged, meaning that 285 00:18:26.559 --> 00:18:30.640 they a lot of them are research and development engineers and they're working at like 286 00:18:30.079 --> 00:18:37.440 a nice stable company. Their research and development engineers oftentimes like don't have this 287 00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:41.640 pressure to push something out at a certain time, and even if they did, 288 00:18:41.720 --> 00:18:45.799 there were also other groups that had to of course have deadlines. They 289 00:18:45.880 --> 00:18:55.039 oftentimes had Basically, their their product is has years and years of history and 290 00:18:55.079 --> 00:19:00.599 it hasn't there's it's an asset for a lot of let's say it's mainly companies, 291 00:19:00.599 --> 00:19:03.160 but it was a navigation system, so basically it's an asset that has 292 00:19:03.160 --> 00:19:07.319 been around for a long time. So it's almost like the client needs them 293 00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:10.599 versus they need the client, if you know what I mean. They kind 294 00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:15.960 of already have a stable market that there there is not much of a huge 295 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.000 pressure. I mean they would have to really mess up to really like be 296 00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:22.279 fired. They they're quite embedded in a lot of systems, so they have 297 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:26.720 to keep it running at good enough speed. Now going back to the engineers, 298 00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:33.000 there's other engineers in Kiev are now not in Kiev anymore, but Kiev, 299 00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:37.559 Krakhov, Bangalore is Global Seals, which were actually doing a lot of 300 00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:41.759 the let's call it dirty work or the fast coding, and they did not 301 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:47.960 have this luxury of good enoughness. So good enoughness can be is a luxury. 302 00:19:48.039 --> 00:19:52.200 It's a freedom in many ways to say this is good enough. I'm 303 00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:55.240 going for a beer, you see that moment. A lot of people think 304 00:19:55.279 --> 00:19:57.519 good enough is just about mediocrity and nobody wants to be good enough. But 305 00:19:57.599 --> 00:20:02.440 actually a lot of these engineers are so happy to google work in a good 306 00:20:02.519 --> 00:20:06.000 enough company because they can say no beer time, No, I'm picking up 307 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:07.559 my kid from school, No I'm going to my kids recital or whatever. 308 00:20:07.839 --> 00:20:11.480 I'm finishing work. Work is not, you know, they're able to do 309 00:20:11.480 --> 00:20:15.440 that. They have the freedom to say that someone in Bangalore who needs to 310 00:20:15.480 --> 00:20:19.400 finish their code reviews or whatever it is that they're doing as an outsourcing company, 311 00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:22.480 has to finish at a certain time, you see what I mean? 312 00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:26.599 So that the good enough has a privilege, and there's different layers of privilege 313 00:20:26.640 --> 00:20:30.119 of depending on what engineer you are, of how much good enoughness you can 314 00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:33.920 allow yourself at work. Yeah, and then the manager question, which is 315 00:20:33.960 --> 00:20:37.200 another work and they don't like the term. Of course, they don't like 316 00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:41.799 the term good enough. And also a few managers who I spoke to were 317 00:20:41.839 --> 00:20:47.880 also I don't really felt kind of hurt by the term good enough or they 318 00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:52.400 they thought they look they saw themselves as like kind of just I don't know, 319 00:20:53.559 --> 00:20:56.680 taking any advantage of their workers, or like pressuring their workers and not 320 00:20:56.759 --> 00:21:00.079 really caring about them. And that's really not what I wanted to get across. 321 00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:04.240 But it's I think it's a tricky thing because the logic of excellence and 322 00:21:04.279 --> 00:21:08.880 the logic of I don't know, a corporate work that runs on key performance 323 00:21:08.920 --> 00:21:12.160 indicators for those of us who know that term, or you know, you 324 00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:17.599 have to have metrics that make sure that you have enough bugs being squashed and 325 00:21:17.759 --> 00:21:21.559 enough productivity that's happening. All of that logic is there and you and as 326 00:21:21.559 --> 00:21:25.160 a manager have to work under that logic, whether you sit down and listen 327 00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:27.200 to your engineers and see what do you really want? What are you good 328 00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:30.960 at? Of course they do that, but then that logic is still in 329 00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:34.119 bubbling up from underneath, you know what I mean. So I think that's 330 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:38.039 yeah, that was tricky. That was very tricky to like say, hey, 331 00:21:38.119 --> 00:21:41.039 good enough is great and they were like, no, no, it's 332 00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:42.359 not great, and that you're making me look stupid, you know. So 333 00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:45.519 yeah, that was hard. No, that's it's interesting too because it's like 334 00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:48.920 there's this is often that question too, I mean in any kind of like 335 00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:52.839 power differential in higher case, especially at workplaces like this, right, Like 336 00:21:52.880 --> 00:21:56.079 I mean even like the entire rise of the managerial class. Right, Yeah, 337 00:21:56.160 --> 00:21:57.920 there's kind of this this like built in resentment a little bit from the 338 00:21:59.400 --> 00:22:03.960 worker class that's you know, usually under the managerial class. Yeah, as 339 00:22:03.960 --> 00:22:04.960 a question of why do I need to be managed? On the one hand, 340 00:22:06.039 --> 00:22:07.759 right, and it's like, you know, and scrum is like is 341 00:22:07.799 --> 00:22:10.279 one of the methods that we see often in software development, right, yes, 342 00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:14.079 of that you could have the interesting tensions you kind of noted in the 343 00:22:14.079 --> 00:22:17.640 book tour This, like the the managers saw that as a great way to 344 00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:18.440 be able to know what's going on. But then like you know, you 345 00:22:18.519 --> 00:22:22.960 had uh, programmers being like scrum is stupid, Like yeah, basically actually 346 00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:26.119 help us get anything done, you know, And it's like we have to 347 00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:27.480 just either have a daily stand up or whatever it is. And it's like 348 00:22:27.720 --> 00:22:32.279 this interesting back and forth that's also on one hand, like an interesting kind 349 00:22:32.319 --> 00:22:34.640 of forced sociality also, right of, like let's be seen and kind of 350 00:22:34.640 --> 00:22:37.000 share the work that we have coming up. Not that it's saying scrum is 351 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:41.599 bad, but just like there's an in intension that we do see like different 352 00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:45.119 different individuals like finding it more or less valuable. Yeah, where managers kind 353 00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:49.119 of more uniformly find something like that helpful because that's actually what their work is 354 00:22:49.119 --> 00:22:52.079 is how do we see what's happening? Yeah, theory, how do we 355 00:22:52.079 --> 00:22:56.000 make things transparent? That's a huge Yeah, definitely, that was the huge 356 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.920 issue here is how to make we make something transparent? And we have a 357 00:23:00.079 --> 00:23:03.640 methodology for that. And for those who don't work in the kind of corporate 358 00:23:03.680 --> 00:23:07.400 software, there's these methodologies that help, you know, managers organize their tech 359 00:23:07.480 --> 00:23:11.200 workers, and one of them is called scrum or agile. There's other forms 360 00:23:11.240 --> 00:23:15.839 and other ways of doing things. But a lot of engineers would tell you 361 00:23:15.880 --> 00:23:18.480 they were like, I don't need scrum, I don't need stand ups, 362 00:23:18.519 --> 00:23:21.359 I don't need this. This is all for the manager, whereas the manager 363 00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:25.119 would say, yeah, that's just like the big headedness of our engineers talking. 364 00:23:25.160 --> 00:23:27.799 They actually do need this because without this they'll just be completely lost. 365 00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:33.480 So it's really trying to show your legitimacy of as a worker that I'm okay 366 00:23:33.519 --> 00:23:37.240 without this. And there's this tension that's not a software engineering tension, is 367 00:23:37.279 --> 00:23:42.400 attention and any sort of work struggle, of a power struggle of who has 368 00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:45.720 the freedom to choose right, who has the freedom to work in a certain 369 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:51.680 way? Yeah, and what is the manager worker relation? And you can 370 00:23:52.359 --> 00:23:56.319 go back to Marx, you can go back to I don't know even yeah, 371 00:23:56.599 --> 00:24:00.720 sort of tailorism, et cetera, and just kind of like app map 372 00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:04.839 all these tensions. I'm not somebody who's expert amount of doing that fully in 373 00:24:04.880 --> 00:24:08.279 this book, but you can see that tensions, especially in one of my 374 00:24:08.440 --> 00:24:15.680 chapters play out on I think it's the one on managing software engineers. Yeah, 375 00:24:15.799 --> 00:24:18.240 it's yeah, managing good enoughness. It's the chapter four. Yeah, 376 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:22.920 got to manage that good enoughness, you know. Yeah. But I think 377 00:24:22.920 --> 00:24:26.359 that's an interesting point too, because it's like the whenever we're kind of working 378 00:24:26.359 --> 00:24:30.640 with a workplace hierarchy, of the different kinds of like micro politics that can 379 00:24:30.920 --> 00:24:33.519 come in there, you know, it's like that ultimately also shapes the quality 380 00:24:33.519 --> 00:24:36.799 of the software, right. Yeah. And it's like this interesting idea because 381 00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:40.519 since we have a you know today, it's like nobody's surprised when it's like, 382 00:24:40.519 --> 00:24:41.759 oh, you open your computer and it says, oh, want to 383 00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:45.279 download a update? For some software. Great, you open your your cell 384 00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:47.319 phone and ask you the same thing, or it just does it in the 385 00:24:47.319 --> 00:24:49.279 background, you know, to the point we don't even notice it sometimes that 386 00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:52.519 that's just like part of what we do now. Yes, I mean I 387 00:24:52.680 --> 00:24:56.759 remember getting the AOL CDs in the mail, yes, as a kid, 388 00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:00.920 you know, and it's like this this you know, I don't. It's 389 00:25:00.920 --> 00:25:03.079 like that transition is so common now. It's like it's it's feels archaic to 390 00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:07.279 even think about that. But it's like a crazy idea to think that the 391 00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:10.480 software is printed on a CD and then just passed out And honestly, like, 392 00:25:10.519 --> 00:25:11.160 I know this is not related to the work, but just like it 393 00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:15.960 had me thinking about both the making of books which we have and like DVDs 394 00:25:15.039 --> 00:25:18.599 in like film that we do. Like these are also like produced works that 395 00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:19.680 do not get continually updated. I mean they can't. You can have a 396 00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:22.559 second, third edition of your book, you know, but it's yeah, 397 00:25:22.759 --> 00:25:26.559 not anywhere as fast as a yeah sprint, you know, for good reasons, 398 00:25:26.599 --> 00:25:29.720 or a TikTok or whatever it is. Yet you're you're, yeah, 399 00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.759 you don't have this flow, this constant waterfall of information that you're constantly updating 400 00:25:33.839 --> 00:25:36.720 yet. But even like when you're finishing writing writing a book, to write 401 00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:38.720 dissertation or thesis or anything, or even a paper for your class, if 402 00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:41.400 you're doing that, it's like they're also still like you. You probably recognize 403 00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:45.000 the good enough feeling, right, It's like, Okay, well I got 404 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:47.759 to turn it in. Yeah, yeah, you know, no, but 405 00:25:47.799 --> 00:25:51.519 I think good enough this. It's funny because when you're writing a book, 406 00:25:51.559 --> 00:25:56.240 and I'm sure the authors you've spoke to in the past have had identified with 407 00:25:56.240 --> 00:26:00.279 this, and we we identified this. We write about what we know and 408 00:26:00.359 --> 00:26:03.039 we care about. And this is a bit bizarre, but I kind of 409 00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:07.119 realized that just after even just finishing the book. I thought, oh man, 410 00:26:07.559 --> 00:26:11.200 my life is very much like lives to the like logic of good enoughness. 411 00:26:11.240 --> 00:26:15.240 And it's something I deeply, deeply believe in. And I you know, 412 00:26:15.319 --> 00:26:18.599 I mentioned this earlier. I don't know this was off off record or 413 00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:22.680 on record, but that I'm also a musician and I published albums, et 414 00:26:22.759 --> 00:26:26.960 cetera, and I tour and that was a very tricky thing to juggle being 415 00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:30.759 a professional musician and an academic at the same time. And it was always 416 00:26:30.759 --> 00:26:33.400 this constant like this is good enough. I have to this is done. 417 00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:37.680 I have to run onto something else. And that's not just original. If 418 00:26:37.680 --> 00:26:40.960 your parent and you work at the same time, these are two jobs. 419 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:44.400 These are huge jobs that you're doing at the same time, and you always 420 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:45.200 have to go, no, this is good enough for now, I have 421 00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:48.480 to pick my kids off from school or whatever. Right, So you're constantly 422 00:26:48.519 --> 00:26:52.759 in this tension of this has to be good enough, right, this, 423 00:26:52.759 --> 00:26:55.359 this has to be enough. There is a deadline, it needs to be 424 00:26:55.400 --> 00:27:00.359 finished. So I think that it's really important to remember that that we're not 425 00:27:00.759 --> 00:27:04.559 all excellent, we're not all awesome. And the term good enoughness, by 426 00:27:04.559 --> 00:27:14.480 the way, comes from actually sort of pediatrics, and there's the few people 427 00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:18.359 in medicine who've actually wrote a paper around the good enough mother and writing about 428 00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:22.559 like what it means to be not perfect, and it's actually very healthy to 429 00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:29.119 actually talk to mothers as doctors. It was kind of a plea to doctors 430 00:27:29.119 --> 00:27:33.680 to really highlight that mothers should not be looked at as excellent, because once 431 00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:37.319 you look at yourself as good enough, you're kind of there's less stress, 432 00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:41.839 there's just tension, there's more understanding of yourself, and that's also plays very 433 00:27:41.880 --> 00:27:45.839 well on your relationship with your child, you see what I mean. So 434 00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:52.440 that understanding I'm good enough, that's okay is very freeing and it is very 435 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:57.519 relaxing, I guess, and I think that. Yeah, But again it's 436 00:27:57.960 --> 00:28:02.119 tricky because it's also comes from a space of privilege to do that, right. 437 00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:04.240 A lot of people can't do that. They'll lose their jobs, they'll 438 00:28:04.279 --> 00:28:07.920 whatever, it will happen. You know, if you say I'm just good 439 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:11.119 enough, so I can easy somebody, because that's a critique that comes to 440 00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:14.920 me. Okay, I could say that as a professor sitting in Switzerland, 441 00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:19.359 you know, doing some research in Berlin among like R and D tech workers. 442 00:28:19.400 --> 00:28:25.599 Fine, but like go to yeah, a coding a farm in I 443 00:28:25.599 --> 00:28:30.119 don't know wherever Krakhoof or something and or not crackwoof maybe anymore, but somewhere 444 00:28:30.119 --> 00:28:33.440 else, and then you'll see that that's exactly and you'll see where what happens 445 00:28:33.440 --> 00:28:36.319 there. You can't just say like, ah, this is good enough, 446 00:28:36.359 --> 00:28:37.720 I'm leaving. No, you're gonna lose your job and someone else take your 447 00:28:37.720 --> 00:28:41.240 spot. Right, So so yeah, so that's that's tough. That's the 448 00:28:41.279 --> 00:28:45.480 tough thing. And that's the critique I do get, and I understand that. 449 00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:48.200 I just I want to paint it as it is a reality that I 450 00:28:48.200 --> 00:28:53.559 think also is there that we don't talk about even in the in our privileged, 451 00:28:53.720 --> 00:28:56.839 very privileged societies, you know, Yeah, No, I think it's 452 00:28:56.960 --> 00:29:00.480 it's important, iportant, and like in general, it's I think that oftentimes 453 00:29:02.119 --> 00:29:06.720 social scientists we can get or as social scientists, we can get kind of 454 00:29:06.759 --> 00:29:08.400 caught up in the in the privilege critique where it's like, well, we 455 00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:11.920 shouldn't be talking about something because it's only for a privileged group. But it's 456 00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:12.279 like, well, no, we have to. We have if we're here 457 00:29:12.279 --> 00:29:15.799 to dissect society, we do have to. It's totally fine to talk about 458 00:29:15.799 --> 00:29:17.799 that. And like that doesn't make it, to your point, not real 459 00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:19.279 or not valid, right, It just means that it's it's for a certain 460 00:29:19.319 --> 00:29:22.079 group. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know so 461 00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:25.079 yeah, so totally find there. But just like, but I think it's 462 00:29:25.079 --> 00:29:27.559 an interesting point because I do, I do. We have interesting work too, 463 00:29:27.559 --> 00:29:30.559 I think as social scientists to to kind of give ourselves permissions sometimes to 464 00:29:30.559 --> 00:29:34.640 to like both do research in places that are that can be spots of like 465 00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:40.200 stated privilege or where you know, awareness of privilege because I feel like we're 466 00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:42.279 not supposed to somehow, And honestly, I think that, on one hand, 467 00:29:42.319 --> 00:29:48.319 also might play into a bit of uh, I don't know if it's 468 00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:51.440 a common I don't want to say neuro seas of social science scientists, but 469 00:29:51.519 --> 00:29:53.519 just like this, this concern that we're either not good enough also for the 470 00:29:53.559 --> 00:29:56.400 research, right and or that like as good enough research is like in like 471 00:29:56.440 --> 00:30:00.160 the hardest places, right. Yeah, you know this also falls narrative that 472 00:30:00.160 --> 00:30:03.799 we have, which it's interesting kind of think about the way that like good 473 00:30:03.880 --> 00:30:06.720 enoughness when you say it and think about in any profession like it kind of 474 00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:10.400 you see where it chips at you either if you have it or privilege to 475 00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:11.880 be able to do it or don't you kind of say, well, what 476 00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:15.799 am I doing right or wrong in my own area? You know? As 477 00:30:15.799 --> 00:30:18.000 I think about that, that's interesting way it kind of like seeps into you. 478 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:22.359 Yes, And it's that's also the I think that's the like I don't 479 00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:23.680 know, it has to do with capitalism. It has to do with like 480 00:30:25.279 --> 00:30:30.240 this, you know, Nancy Fraser talks about the crisis of care in capitalism 481 00:30:30.279 --> 00:30:36.119 and that like care. When you start caring, you're not working hard enough. 482 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:38.240 You're stopping and slowing down. Right, this is like the notion of 483 00:30:38.279 --> 00:30:45.640 slowing down is somehow, it's a it's doesn't work well in our logic that 484 00:30:45.640 --> 00:30:48.880 we are living in. And I think that that's that's difficult. That is 485 00:30:48.920 --> 00:30:52.599 the difficulty. And I think that's that's something that we should definitely remember. 486 00:30:52.720 --> 00:30:57.720 And I do this work, and I wrote this book just for people to 487 00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:03.480 also look beyond just learning about how software works, but also to understand a 488 00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:10.319 little bit of understand themselves in the world. And I once I did touch 489 00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:14.160 somehow my students who I I you know, I teach it this very elite 490 00:31:14.200 --> 00:31:18.000 business school that I sometimes have a huge problem with is being here at full 491 00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:22.880 disclosure because it's it's people who are living this like non good it's just about 492 00:31:22.920 --> 00:31:27.160 Excellence's about being perfectly the best, but going to a consultancy firm and like 493 00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:30.680 winning, winning when you have to be the best of the best. And 494 00:31:30.680 --> 00:31:33.160 and just to say, actually, guys, you know, to say the 495 00:31:33.240 --> 00:31:37.839 first year, just beginning, first day, students, good enoughness is still 496 00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:42.079 good, and you you there is other spaces you know that you will find 497 00:31:42.119 --> 00:31:47.200 yourself and you don't have to be excellent. And yeah, and that's that's 498 00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:49.279 I think, really really important. But one last thing I want to say. 499 00:31:49.400 --> 00:31:52.519 Maybe I don't know if we have to slowly wrap up or you have 500 00:31:52.559 --> 00:31:56.240 a few more questions, but the second but a thing about also, I 501 00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:00.880 have this little anecdote in my conclusion about you know, one of this good 502 00:32:00.880 --> 00:32:06.319 pie goodbye party to a few of the engineers who are leaving to like, 503 00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:08.160 you know, the non good enough companies. You know, they left for 504 00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:14.839 the big huge tech companies, the Googles and the Microsoft's and the facebooks, 505 00:32:15.240 --> 00:32:19.559 and they were leaving, and then I kind of met a bunch of engineers 506 00:32:19.559 --> 00:32:21.880 who were saying goodbye to them. This was all like a beer guarden in 507 00:32:21.880 --> 00:32:24.720 Berlin, and even I they asked me what my book was about, and 508 00:32:24.759 --> 00:32:29.200 I said, well, it's you know, it's about the greatness of middle 509 00:32:29.240 --> 00:32:32.119 tech because it's really like this space of good enoughness and how good enoughness works. 510 00:32:32.119 --> 00:32:37.160 And they their hearts sank. They really were like, what good enoughness? 511 00:32:37.160 --> 00:32:38.559 Oh no? And you know, like kind of this comparison of these 512 00:32:38.920 --> 00:32:43.559 these people who are celebrated who are leaving, you know, these other workers. 513 00:32:43.599 --> 00:32:45.480 Yeah, they're going to Microsoft, They're going to Google. Wow, 514 00:32:45.599 --> 00:32:50.680 so wonderful. But I'm staying behind, right, I'm working here for another 515 00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:52.680 fifteen years already and I'm still here. You know, this is my good 516 00:32:52.759 --> 00:32:57.720 enough job, and so in some ways it's it does eat at these tech 517 00:32:57.720 --> 00:33:00.319 workers. I want to just say that that I'm not painting this sort of 518 00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:02.400 story of everyone be like, yeah, we have such a good job because 519 00:33:02.400 --> 00:33:07.119 we could just coast around and freeload and like be good enough all the time. 520 00:33:07.400 --> 00:33:09.160 It is a tension within them. It's exactly the tension that you're talking 521 00:33:09.200 --> 00:33:14.839 about, Adam, that affects all sorts of different placepople and different workforces that 522 00:33:15.359 --> 00:33:19.200 they are also struggling with this term that this is hard for them, that 523 00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:22.880 they want to be at Microsoft sometimes because this logic, you know, these 524 00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:27.960 forces of post industrial capitalism work against this logic. So they and they're part 525 00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:30.680 of this logic where we all feel that, you know. So I just 526 00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:34.319 want to say that I felt that among my engineers very much so too, 527 00:33:34.680 --> 00:33:37.279 that the struggle. That's a really important point and I appreciate you bringing that 528 00:33:37.319 --> 00:33:39.519 up too, because you can you can totally see on the one hand, 529 00:33:39.559 --> 00:33:45.160 how the idea can feel uncomfortable because because even like on the one hand, 530 00:33:45.200 --> 00:33:47.160 like if you're in a certain working environment socioeconomic class, you will lose your 531 00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:50.440 job if you're not if you don't do work, that's good. Yeah, 532 00:33:50.799 --> 00:33:52.640 But then also if you're in a more a more privileged class or even just 533 00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:57.920 more like you know, entrenched middle class, it feels like you're not doing 534 00:33:58.160 --> 00:34:00.359 enough. The enough part ironic if you if you're just good enough, like 535 00:34:00.359 --> 00:34:02.880 you feel like I should be more excellent and more better. So it just 536 00:34:02.880 --> 00:34:07.680 show us. It's always kind of pulling us upwards regardless. And that's like 537 00:34:07.720 --> 00:34:10.719 an interesting challenge point that like I think why it's such an effective kind of 538 00:34:10.760 --> 00:34:15.280 lens through which to think about, Yeah, you know, software development, 539 00:34:15.320 --> 00:34:16.280 but I think to this point, like the bigger question about how we do 540 00:34:16.360 --> 00:34:21.760 work in like late in post capras, well post industrial capra es not post 541 00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:24.239 capitalis are not there yet? Yes? Exactly? Not? Yeah? What 542 00:34:24.360 --> 00:34:29.039 the future of like labor is and how this? Yeah, how is this? 543 00:34:29.159 --> 00:34:31.760 Like what potential for emancipation is there? Is there any? And is 544 00:34:31.800 --> 00:34:37.519 this one form of sort of micro emancipation outside of it? I don't know, 545 00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:40.840 it's you're still that's really I don't have an answer really unfortunately that I 546 00:34:40.840 --> 00:34:45.360 don't know, if you know, I also know that middle tech is going 547 00:34:45.400 --> 00:34:49.719 to be replaced. It's not going to stay forever. And I think middle 548 00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:57.079 tech will be subsumed by these different challenges and of you know, different experiences. 549 00:34:57.119 --> 00:35:00.679 I think even in an example, not that I've studied Twitter or X, 550 00:35:00.039 --> 00:35:02.920 but another example when like you know, Elon Musk comes in and like 551 00:35:04.039 --> 00:35:08.719 swoops in and kind of fires hundreds and hundreds of tech workers. That's a 552 00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:13.800 total example of like, wait, why is Twitter still working or why is 553 00:35:13.920 --> 00:35:16.480 X still working after all these hundreds of workers were fired. Well, it 554 00:35:16.519 --> 00:35:21.920 has a lot too with like time and ways in which season engineers were embedded, 555 00:35:21.960 --> 00:35:23.840 and of course a good enough culture. I think that comes out in 556 00:35:24.360 --> 00:35:29.519 different companies and it doesn't have to just be a medium sized company in Berlin. 557 00:35:29.639 --> 00:35:31.960 There's also good enough culture exists, as I also write at the Google's, 558 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:35.679 at the Facebook's, at the Ex's, et cetera. But then there 559 00:35:35.679 --> 00:35:37.719 are the Elon Musk to come in, like what were these people doing out 560 00:35:37.719 --> 00:35:40.880 with them? Right? So, and I think that it could be it 561 00:35:40.920 --> 00:35:45.760 will middletech be either bought out by another company. Yeah, and then yeah, 562 00:35:45.840 --> 00:35:50.840 somehow and we see also this is also another maybe looking at the future. 563 00:35:51.519 --> 00:35:57.960 My next project is on how engineers are dealing with different tools AI tools 564 00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:01.920 like CHATSBT but also like co pilot, et cetera, and these are or 565 00:36:01.960 --> 00:36:06.639 so this is going to be a huge wave but already starting to really affect 566 00:36:07.159 --> 00:36:10.719 how engineers do their work and how software engineers organized. So there'll be a 567 00:36:10.760 --> 00:36:16.119 lot of redundancies. People will be fired because you know, the AI can 568 00:36:16.159 --> 00:36:20.239 do their job. So that also is going to be tricky of how good 569 00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:25.679 enoughness will be challenged and stabilized through the like kind of yeah production. I've 570 00:36:25.679 --> 00:36:29.119 even been hired to try or tried that. Someone tried to hire me. 571 00:36:29.400 --> 00:36:30.840 This is so funny. They didn't read my book. They like wrote me 572 00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:34.480 an email Adam last week. That was so funny. They were like, 573 00:36:34.960 --> 00:36:37.760 Hi, we're from a large software coming I'm not going to say their name, 574 00:36:38.079 --> 00:36:42.199 and we would love it if you could do some work on how to 575 00:36:42.360 --> 00:36:46.239 up the efficiency of our workers given chatt I mean they read they read like 576 00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:49.800 that idea some work on AI, and they're like, because we could we 577 00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:53.519 heard that AI can like really up the efficiency of our software production. And 578 00:36:53.559 --> 00:36:57.039 I was like, man, did you not read my book? I guess 579 00:36:57.039 --> 00:37:00.679 you did it. Yeah exactly. Anyways, Yeah, well congratulations on getting 580 00:37:00.679 --> 00:37:04.599 I get pitched pitched for work. But that is a that's a that's a 581 00:37:04.599 --> 00:37:07.639 funny point that we're like, uh, you missed the entire human side of 582 00:37:07.679 --> 00:37:10.679 the work. Yeah, I'm not going to help you be more efficient. 583 00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:14.519 No, I want you to be good enough. Yeah, you know. 584 00:37:14.599 --> 00:37:17.320 Yeah, but I think that that's that's a really interesting point because and I 585 00:37:17.320 --> 00:37:21.159 I was curious, and I mean I am curious about like that, because 586 00:37:21.239 --> 00:37:24.239 I know, because you're you're doing this research eighteen you know. And but 587 00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:29.159 obviously like AI is now yeah, mainstream, like you know, Gethub has 588 00:37:29.199 --> 00:37:31.760 their co pilot like you mentioned, Microsoft also ironically has titled co pilot. 589 00:37:31.800 --> 00:37:36.519 Yeah, lazy titling guys. I wanted code pilot. I always thought it 590 00:37:36.559 --> 00:37:39.079 was going to be good, right, code pilot, Like, come on, 591 00:37:39.159 --> 00:37:42.239 guys, put on words. And I thought, really, gosh, 592 00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:45.559 okay, yeah, where's the developer puny. Yeah that's a great point. 593 00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:49.079 Yes, sorry, but these things, yes, you're right, No, 594 00:37:49.079 --> 00:37:51.760 not at all, but like that, like how that also adds to like 595 00:37:51.800 --> 00:37:53.480 the challenge of redundancies of a kind of work, you know, but then 596 00:37:53.559 --> 00:37:58.320 shifting the nature of work itself. And I do think that's a that's a 597 00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:01.400 fundamentally important question. Yeah, because it's it's you know, I've been thinking 598 00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:07.440 about this too, because it's like the first at least consumer side applications of 599 00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:13.039 of AI, you know, came I think for like the the kind of 600 00:38:13.079 --> 00:38:15.920 weird areas, right, Like it helps with creative writing, it helps with 601 00:38:15.960 --> 00:38:19.320 image generation, it can do music stuff, and it can do coding. 602 00:38:19.760 --> 00:38:23.360 And it's like, why are we targeting like not on purpose, not you 603 00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:30.119 know, consumer facing things that are like creative enterprises versus like let's automate traffic 604 00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:31.800 stops to be more efficient. You know. It's like this interesting idea of 605 00:38:31.840 --> 00:38:36.960 like what what the consumer uses of AI were like pitched towards you know, 606 00:38:37.159 --> 00:38:39.119 versus like actually we talked about it's going to help remove drudgery. It's like, 607 00:38:39.360 --> 00:38:42.280 I mean, all of us, who probably you know, many of 608 00:38:42.360 --> 00:38:45.599 us have used some sort of generative AI to like either help us put a 609 00:38:45.599 --> 00:38:49.559 paragraph together or correct as sentence versus few ideas, and then like everything comes 610 00:38:49.599 --> 00:38:53.400 out like I would say, yeah, mediocre, definitely, definitely, you 611 00:38:53.440 --> 00:38:57.000 know, because it's the hours of the internet, so it's like it's not 612 00:38:57.039 --> 00:38:59.400 not going to be great. But like, so, yeah, I guess 613 00:38:59.519 --> 00:39:02.079 I'm curious like your thoughts on this too, both as a musician and as 614 00:39:02.079 --> 00:39:05.199 as a researcher. It's like, isn't that it's curious to me, like 615 00:39:05.679 --> 00:39:08.400 what the what the consumer applications are or the enterprise applications because it's also this 616 00:39:08.480 --> 00:39:13.079 is like how do we help improve efficiency across like the development of pipeline And 617 00:39:13.119 --> 00:39:17.239 it's like it's funny because it's like a technological solution to to something that's a 618 00:39:17.239 --> 00:39:22.119 social problem. Yeah, and actually you do say that, you say this 619 00:39:22.159 --> 00:39:23.800 summerre too, like that's part of the part of the point of your work 620 00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:27.599 is to help us be like we stopped try. We can't be using new 621 00:39:27.639 --> 00:39:30.519 technology to solve old technology problems because they don't do that. Yeah, that's 622 00:39:30.519 --> 00:39:32.599 not that's not how these work, especially when they're they're social problems. So 623 00:39:35.599 --> 00:39:37.920 what does that bring up? Gosh, yeah, it's hard to say. 624 00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:45.239 And also why these creative realms are being tackled, Like I think that I 625 00:39:45.519 --> 00:39:49.559 don't know, maybe this is just me thinking that this is like non creative 626 00:39:49.559 --> 00:39:54.199 people trying to try to capture forms of creativity and like hone them for themselves 627 00:39:54.239 --> 00:39:59.039 so that they can be creative maybe because and once you see, like engineers, 628 00:39:59.079 --> 00:40:00.119 once I did, I did a little pilot study and I looked at 629 00:40:00.159 --> 00:40:05.840 how engineers are using copilot and which is for those who don't know, like 630 00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:08.800 the AI owned by Microsoft on one of the main AI tools, encoding, 631 00:40:09.320 --> 00:40:15.400 and it really was in the non it's always in the non creative moments are 632 00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:20.239 the very like let's even not call them non creative, like the very mundane 633 00:40:20.320 --> 00:40:24.360 and very mechanical things that that actually it's good at. But the creativity of 634 00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:31.280 really like fully like designing something well or trying to understand how to refactor a 635 00:40:31.320 --> 00:40:37.679 whole section of your whatever your piece of software that you're building, you kind 636 00:40:37.760 --> 00:40:42.119 of have to like be a bit yeah, you have to be a bit 637 00:40:42.519 --> 00:40:46.239 creative, and you have to There is a human aspect that's about planning, 638 00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:52.159 right about trying to figure out how the repercussion of what you're building will look 639 00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:55.719 like in the future and look at all sorts of different contingencies that an AI 640 00:40:55.840 --> 00:41:00.039 sometimes doesn't at ye at least yet doesn't understand how to do that. And 641 00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:04.880 it's a little bit with also music when you come to understand when you start 642 00:41:04.920 --> 00:41:09.039 listening to AI generated music. I find musicians do see the difference. A 643 00:41:09.039 --> 00:41:12.880 lot of non musicians kind of are like, ah, no, I don't. 644 00:41:12.920 --> 00:41:15.480 I don't see the difference to this. But I think in a long 645 00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:20.599 run, the sort of the way in which music stays with you and the 646 00:41:20.639 --> 00:41:23.800 way in which it becomes part of your sort of soul and you sing the 647 00:41:23.920 --> 00:41:28.920 lyric and you you know you want it to be with you for a long, 648 00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:30.559 long pot time. When you when you hear a good, good piece 649 00:41:30.559 --> 00:41:36.079 of music that you really like, then that has to be created by somebody 650 00:41:36.079 --> 00:41:38.920 that touches you some way, I think. So I feel more that when 651 00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:44.000 stuff needs to stay for a longer period of time and be there with us 652 00:41:44.079 --> 00:41:47.519 and kind of touch us in some way. That could also be robust software 653 00:41:47.559 --> 00:41:52.360 that makes sense for all sorts of systems and whatever, all sorts of hardware 654 00:41:52.519 --> 00:41:58.320 and whatever it is you're building. You have to have a way on which 655 00:41:58.360 --> 00:42:01.480 you can plan that and understand its longevity. Does that make any sense? 656 00:42:01.519 --> 00:42:07.199 So I would say that like that ability to like make something stay is not 657 00:42:07.679 --> 00:42:12.960 really yet there with AI and I don't think it could be. Yeah, 658 00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:15.559 I don't know if that madey sense. Yeah, I love. I mean 659 00:42:15.599 --> 00:42:17.840 it's it's like it speaks a bit to the idea of stickiness, what's going 660 00:42:17.880 --> 00:42:22.400 to make something stay. There's actually there's a quote I want to read from 661 00:42:22.440 --> 00:42:25.440 your book, Oh to get to as part of that fancies having, because 662 00:42:25.440 --> 00:42:29.079 it really stood out to me because it's it like speaks to these and it 663 00:42:29.519 --> 00:42:31.199 actually this is the now it was in my head because this is where it 664 00:42:31.239 --> 00:42:35.400 has the idea of like new and old technology, but it speaks to a 665 00:42:35.400 --> 00:42:37.239 lot of the ideas that we've been talking about so far. That and this 666 00:42:37.320 --> 00:42:43.159 comes like right right before you're afterward and basically you know, you say so. 667 00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:45.159 While our past was rooted in expansion, in the demand for bigger, 668 00:42:45.199 --> 00:42:47.960 better, and greater, it is my hope that the skills and tactics of 669 00:42:49.000 --> 00:42:53.079 good enoughness will be necessary to build a livable future. Resistance to narratives capitalism 670 00:42:53.159 --> 00:42:58.239 can include care, compromise, balance, safety, contentment, and collegiality. 671 00:42:58.599 --> 00:43:01.199 And knowing how to be good enough give us the skill to maintain our infrastructures 672 00:43:01.239 --> 00:43:05.719 and keep them running and stable. Accepting a good enough work culture can be 673 00:43:05.760 --> 00:43:09.760 productive as it leaves time for the realignment of power relations, the reconfiguration of 674 00:43:09.760 --> 00:43:14.280 what is important at a given moment. And you know, while while I 675 00:43:14.280 --> 00:43:16.760 aim to illustrate the overarching need for managers, workers and software users to accept 676 00:43:16.800 --> 00:43:22.079 the inherent bugginess and lethargy of working in technical systems, it's really my hope 677 00:43:22.199 --> 00:43:24.719 to get us out of the mindset that traps us into thinking that new technology 678 00:43:24.920 --> 00:43:28.880 will save us from the old one, and doing so it can help us 679 00:43:28.920 --> 00:43:32.679 embrace endurance over newness and maintenance over repair over quick innovation, and prepare us 680 00:43:32.719 --> 00:43:37.480 for a highly adversarial world that is to come. A ton of good stuff 681 00:43:37.480 --> 00:43:43.280 in there. So thank you because that encapsulated thinks such such the import of 682 00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:45.239 this work and so something else you're saying that there's the stickiness from the AI 683 00:43:46.159 --> 00:43:50.480 that's not quite there, but also this idea of like we're we're so obsessed 684 00:43:50.519 --> 00:43:53.440 by the shiny object that like we we are roads or crumbling. Yeah, 685 00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:57.159 you know, it's like we don't actually think there's no value, don't We 686 00:43:57.159 --> 00:44:00.039 don't place sexiness on maintenance and endurance, but like that's really what makes the 687 00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:04.119 world work. Yes, definitely, I can go to work, yes, 688 00:44:04.159 --> 00:44:07.320 to invent the new thing exactly. Yeah, definitely. I think I don't 689 00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:09.719 know if I could add anything that I think that was. I tried to. 690 00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:13.880 It's one of my last sentences was that, like the last the last 691 00:44:13.880 --> 00:44:15.760 part of my right before the afterwards. It's it's, it's it towards the 692 00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:19.840 end. Yeah, so I really tried to like craft this, you know, 693 00:44:20.079 --> 00:44:23.519 this conclusion, conclusions of the conclusion, and yeah, I think I 694 00:44:23.559 --> 00:44:27.920 can't. I don't know how to add to that basically because which is good. 695 00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:30.159 Well, I wrote that. That's nice when you read to me like, 696 00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:34.960 oh that's cool. Actually, maybe I'll ringe in five years, but 697 00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:37.960 I'm still not cringing. I guess I hope not. No, I mean 698 00:44:37.239 --> 00:44:39.599 no, because I think I was beautifully written and like that's I mean, 699 00:44:39.639 --> 00:44:42.360 it stuck out it up that I wanted to. I wanted to read it 700 00:44:43.199 --> 00:44:45.760 because I think there's there's so much here in terms of like to our point 701 00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:51.400 we're talking about, there is this dialogue between care versus speed. Right, 702 00:44:51.440 --> 00:44:54.000 you're like working versus care and like that that's the Nancy Fraser moment that you 703 00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:58.840 mentioned before, the tension between those ideas. But then also I like this 704 00:44:58.920 --> 00:45:00.840 idea that good enough this because we've been talking a lot about it, how 705 00:45:00.840 --> 00:45:04.760 it's like it feels little, it feels a little cringey to the software developers 706 00:45:04.920 --> 00:45:07.719 or managers. But here you're kind of saying it's actually a skill, you 707 00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:10.880 know, work environment to think about like and how we think about operating and 708 00:45:10.880 --> 00:45:15.639 setting up our world. And you know, you point out again here the 709 00:45:15.719 --> 00:45:19.360 value of that is that because it access helps us think about things like endurance, 710 00:45:19.880 --> 00:45:22.440 maintenance and keeping things going right yes, versus just like what's next, 711 00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:25.239 what's new? Yes? And AI I think has that exact problem, right, 712 00:45:25.239 --> 00:45:28.719 It's always about what's next and what's new, and not like let's make 713 00:45:29.119 --> 00:45:31.559 sure things actually work. That's true, that's interesting. I would be another 714 00:45:31.639 --> 00:45:37.280 people who are interested in this area. You could look into Andy Russell's and 715 00:45:37.440 --> 00:45:40.280 leave Vinzel's work on maintenance and repair. There's this like group of people called 716 00:45:40.280 --> 00:45:45.239 them maintainers. That's a kind of a network of Yeah, I don't know 717 00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:47.519 what you've probably had experience, did you, Yeah, the maintainers, and 718 00:45:47.559 --> 00:45:53.800 they're like researchers and advocates for people that care about a whale well maintained world. 719 00:45:54.000 --> 00:45:58.119 I guess that's their like mission statement. So it's cool you could look 720 00:45:58.159 --> 00:46:01.239 out their their work, and I think that there are a lot of people 721 00:46:01.360 --> 00:46:05.559 just really trying to put our focus away from the shiny and new. You 722 00:46:05.559 --> 00:46:09.880 can look about like the deep growth movement and sustainability studies and like just trying 723 00:46:09.920 --> 00:46:15.519 to Yeah, it's it is quite hopefully about sustainability is really this idea, 724 00:46:15.559 --> 00:46:22.039 although good enoughness can come off as like sloppiness too. That's another And that's 725 00:46:22.039 --> 00:46:27.320 the thing that I haven't really I guess I haven't really I see that there's 726 00:46:27.480 --> 00:46:30.159 there's a problem in that notion, and I still haven't figured it out because 727 00:46:30.159 --> 00:46:35.280 on one hand, it's about care and about maintenance. But it's when I 728 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:37.519 talk about it sometimes about compromise, right, saying like I can't care enough 729 00:46:37.559 --> 00:46:39.960 about this anymore. I have to go right, I need to compromise on 730 00:46:40.039 --> 00:46:44.719 the quality of this because I have to do something else. So the well 731 00:46:44.800 --> 00:46:49.800 maintained well maintenance also about slowness and slowing down. And sometimes good enoughness is 732 00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:55.519 about moving fast, But it's not about moving fast because you want to like 733 00:46:55.639 --> 00:47:00.039 build the newest, shiniest app It's like really about made moving fast because you 734 00:47:00.079 --> 00:47:04.719 don't fully have time to care about this. You have to care about something 735 00:47:04.719 --> 00:47:07.679 else, and that could be about your own well being. You're being of 736 00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:12.679 good friend, doing a big good mother, being a good boyfriend, whatever 737 00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:15.800 it is that you want to also care about, you see what I mean. 738 00:47:15.880 --> 00:47:19.199 So it's about like, yeah, that shift that we're constantly doing. 739 00:47:19.239 --> 00:47:22.039 That's not only about work. We are a multiple of things, right, 740 00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:25.039 So yeah, anyways, so I hope that that kind of makes sense. 741 00:47:25.800 --> 00:47:29.760 Yeah, well totally. I mean it's like it encapsulates that idea that like, 742 00:47:30.079 --> 00:47:34.320 you know, the original use of the word economics like Greek or costs 743 00:47:34.400 --> 00:47:37.840 is actually for managing one's home, right, And so it's like reminds us 744 00:47:37.880 --> 00:47:42.239 that work is like it's the work life balance, you know, fake idea, 745 00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:44.400 right that like they're somehow separate, and it's like, no, we 746 00:47:44.480 --> 00:47:46.239 have to always manage all of them, yes, and life of course. 747 00:47:46.719 --> 00:47:49.960 Yeah. So I think that that's a great point too, where it's like, 748 00:47:50.599 --> 00:47:52.239 so it's also a good question that you raised there too. So if 749 00:47:52.360 --> 00:47:55.079 listeners watchers, if anything jumps to your mind in terms of this idea of 750 00:47:55.119 --> 00:47:59.960 like is there attention or challenge with this idea that good enoughness also feels slow. 751 00:48:00.519 --> 00:48:02.400 How do we think about that? Right, because I think you're you're 752 00:48:02.440 --> 00:48:06.280 right where it's like it can be moving quickly, it can be moving slowly. 753 00:48:06.280 --> 00:48:07.960 It can be moving with care for one thing or with care for a 754 00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:10.079 lot of things. And that then, like you know, and depending on 755 00:48:10.119 --> 00:48:12.679 how you're looking at it, right, that could feel sloppy, but you 756 00:48:12.679 --> 00:48:15.440 can also feel like super efficient depending on you know. So it's like it 757 00:48:15.480 --> 00:48:19.679 is about a point of view too, I think in terms of both an 758 00:48:19.719 --> 00:48:23.079 intent of what's one trying to accomplish and also you know, what does someone 759 00:48:23.079 --> 00:48:27.719 else seeing said person trying to accomplish, you know, in that moment. 760 00:48:27.760 --> 00:48:30.239 So I think there's it's always a three D moving piece, right, It's 761 00:48:30.239 --> 00:48:35.280 like always going to be kind of you know, one person's one person sloppy 762 00:48:35.320 --> 00:48:37.880 is another person's efficiency. But I hear you in terms of like, is 763 00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:42.960 there is there a way to talk about what's happening here that captures like but 764 00:48:43.159 --> 00:48:45.119 the that still also feels good because it seems like good enough. As people 765 00:48:45.159 --> 00:48:46.880 have we have to like get to the point of saying, oh it is 766 00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:50.960 a good enough sexually okay, good enough is good because you feel like it's 767 00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:52.599 like that. So there's an interesting, interesting tension there. Yeah, exactly 768 00:48:52.599 --> 00:48:55.679 of what that is. Because you're right, because overall is actually a positive 769 00:48:55.719 --> 00:49:00.119 thing. Yes, but for a lot of people it's and yeah, and 770 00:49:00.159 --> 00:49:02.320 a lot of people it's not positive. It's not enough. You know this, 771 00:49:02.480 --> 00:49:06.199 this tent should between the term good good, the word good and the 772 00:49:06.239 --> 00:49:09.199 good word enough, and it's constantly isn't enough. No, it's not enough 773 00:49:09.239 --> 00:49:12.199 for some people. It is enough for me, it's good enough. For 774 00:49:12.280 --> 00:49:15.320 others it's not enough. You know. This is funny, Yeah, and 775 00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:19.239 it's yeah, I don't have an answer that I think you're We're constantly going 776 00:49:19.320 --> 00:49:24.239 to be like jumping between unless we like, yeah, anythink really slowed slowed 777 00:49:24.320 --> 00:49:28.599 down? Maybe I don't know, or really I don't know. I don't 778 00:49:28.599 --> 00:49:32.039 have I think this is like moves into also like sort of self help territory. 779 00:49:32.119 --> 00:49:36.960 And Abram Albert wrote a book also called good Enough that's more about like 780 00:49:37.039 --> 00:49:39.639 the good enough term and from as a philosopher. He wrote a book. 781 00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.920 It's also out with Princeton University Press. So I also recommend checking that out 782 00:49:45.079 --> 00:49:49.800 if you're interested in the term good enough in our life as a sort of 783 00:49:49.920 --> 00:49:52.400 philosophy and as yeah, so it's not an ethnography, it's not he's not 784 00:49:52.400 --> 00:49:58.199 an anthropology, but also maybe worth checking out totally. Yeah, we're okay 785 00:49:58.239 --> 00:50:05.400 with all sorts of thinkers on this other shoe good. It's I've trained more 786 00:50:05.400 --> 00:50:07.519 in sociology, So am I really through? I don't know, but yeah, 787 00:50:07.639 --> 00:50:13.199 my partner's an anthropologists and he he told me that there's it's a joke 788 00:50:13.239 --> 00:50:15.239 if you spend like two weeks in a field. So I really learned the 789 00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:21.199 beauty of very long term field work where you kind of very much fueled your 790 00:50:21.239 --> 00:50:24.880 whole body within the field. And I really found my hat to like all 791 00:50:24.920 --> 00:50:30.559 anthropologists who who spend a long time in the field. Oh yeah, I 792 00:50:30.559 --> 00:50:34.559 mean it's funny because I will say on the flip side that like, I 793 00:50:34.559 --> 00:50:36.960 both like that, but also I really value people that are able to do 794 00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:39.480 Rabbi ethnography and like they're able to do it quickly because it's like because we 795 00:50:39.840 --> 00:50:43.480 the work demands, like they both are valuable and they both we both have 796 00:50:43.559 --> 00:50:45.199 we have to do both, right, Yeah, that's true, that's true. 797 00:50:45.280 --> 00:50:49.000 And some people, yeah, some anthropologis can't say okay, this is 798 00:50:49.000 --> 00:50:52.599 good enough. They keep going, but I think, yeah, yeah, 799 00:50:52.719 --> 00:50:58.800 it's true, so true that there's something for one to each your own and 800 00:50:58.840 --> 00:51:01.000 one has a purpose in the other as well, and the one can uncover 801 00:51:01.400 --> 00:51:05.800 a lot that others can't. So that's also interesting too. Yeah for sure, 802 00:51:06.800 --> 00:51:07.880 no, hey, holdism, it all works together, you know, 803 00:51:07.920 --> 00:51:13.079 it's like, yeah, I mean I would say fifty percent of the time 804 00:51:13.079 --> 00:51:15.239 on the show, I'm not only the anthropologist, and that that's on purpose. 805 00:51:15.239 --> 00:51:17.159 Actually this is like, so it's because the point is like, how 806 00:51:17.159 --> 00:51:20.880 do we get how do we get other thought leaders and folks interested in social 807 00:51:20.920 --> 00:51:28.039 sciences, and so that's so anthropologists of social scientists, like sometimes I guess 808 00:51:28.039 --> 00:51:34.199 sometimes I have the after life is your anthro life? Sometimes Adams your Yeah, 809 00:51:34.480 --> 00:51:38.360 Adam's cash, she has a title. I guess Adam's after life Adam 810 00:51:39.239 --> 00:51:44.199 nice? Exactly Cool. Cool, I mean that's there's there's always more. 811 00:51:44.360 --> 00:51:47.239 You know that too. Yeah, it's work, who knows, but cool. 812 00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:51.199 Paula, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you hopping 813 00:51:51.239 --> 00:51:53.599 on and I'm excited to get the book into the the eyes and ears of 814 00:51:54.400 --> 00:51:57.440 audience members. So we'll have a link to it in the show. Notes 815 00:51:58.400 --> 00:52:01.000 and yeah, so I'm excited to see what you'll come up with, obviously 816 00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:04.840 in the AI space after this and see how that goes. It's kind of 817 00:52:04.840 --> 00:52:07.599 scary, but I think interesting. No, it was really nice talking to 818 00:52:07.639 --> 00:52:10.400 you, and you're such a great listener and I really like listening your podcast 819 00:52:10.400 --> 00:52:14.960 because you really read our books, which is crazy and a lot of people 820 00:52:14.960 --> 00:52:17.400 don't do that. And it's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you 821 00:52:17.400 --> 00:52:22.119 so much. Awesome cool. Well, many thanks and we'll we'll see ye, 822 00:52:22.360 --> 00:52:24.719 take care, happy reading. Let's a wrap on today's discussion with Paula 823 00:52:24.719 --> 00:52:29.000 Biowski on the nuances of good enough and software development and beyond. Thanks so 824 00:52:29.079 --> 00:52:31.199 much for joining me on the podcast today, paul I've really enjoyed the conversation 825 00:52:31.239 --> 00:52:36.360 with you. Yeah, we journeyed through the complexities of maintaining balance, care, 826 00:52:36.519 --> 00:52:39.599 and compromise in the fast paced world of technology and development. This conversation 827 00:52:39.639 --> 00:52:44.880 not only sheds light on the tangible aspects of coding culture and workplace dynamics, 828 00:52:45.079 --> 00:52:49.239 but also invites us to rethink our relationship with a never ending pursuit of excellence. 829 00:52:49.360 --> 00:52:52.199 As we close this episode, let's carry forward the idea that sometimes being 830 00:52:52.239 --> 00:52:57.400 good enough doesn't signify mediocrity, but a mindful acknowledgment of our limits and priorities, 831 00:52:57.519 --> 00:53:00.559 both in our professional and personal lives. So thank you for tuning in 832 00:53:00.639 --> 00:53:04.920 out. This has sparks of reflections on how we can navigate these demands of 833 00:53:04.960 --> 00:53:07.199 our increasingly digital world. Stay curious and we'll see you in the next episode. 834 00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:09.800 I'm Adam Getwell and you're watching this Anthra Life.