Notices by Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net), page 9

There were some amazing things happening during that time in comics. Superman died in DC. Batman got broken by Bane. X-Men Age of Apocalypse happened. Really incredible stories. Not to mention Image comics came out and changed the whole scene. Spawn, Wildcats, Youngblood, Witchblade.

It was an awesome time to be a comic book geek.

A thesis.

@eaton @johnallsopp what was the reception to the talk?

Alex and I met a long time ago. When the js community was still niche and fun. We've stayed loosely connected, and I watched as he has done his best to steer the community away from the ridiculous place we currently find ourselves. For Alex to be entirely fed up is not a small thing. He has spent more than a decade being unfathomably nice and patient about it. I was there.
https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/112106647240601587

Oh, sorry. That was the wrong link from that thread. I like this spicy one.

I also had my run-ins with personalities in this community that wanted to make everything way more complicated.

And when you try to push back on the complexity, those people turn you into the aggressor.
https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/112106618100167378

Alex has one fundamental message. This stuff is not better for users. A lot of what we end up building today sucks as an experience. Few people want to admit that. No matter how you try to show it. With performance data, user feedback, traffic rates, lost revenue. People don't wanna hear it.

My message has been related but a bit different. The complexity here is unsustainable. As a leader of engineering teams over the last 10 years, I've watched them become less and less empowered. There are a lot of engineers who still care a lot about building something good. But I watch as they drown in complexity. They want to fix things, but they literally can't. And that frustration comes out in all kinds of dysfunctional ways.

There was a point when I had to reset my expectations as a manager. When I build teams, I lean into autonomy and ownership as core values. My team can take the codebase in whatever direction they want. But they have to be responsible for the outcomes. What I realized is that they were not prepared to be responsible. Things got away from them, and they were feeling trapped and defeated.

I have been hesitating to talk about this for a long time. I know that some people are reading this and thinking that I'm disparaging my teams. That's not what this is at all. I know how to hire great engineers. These folks are smart and capable. For them to be defeated by complexity is an indictment of the ecosystem. Not the team.

I'm seeing this same thing from a different vantage point. I also coach people when they are interviewing for engineering jobs. I'm seeing how the baseline requirements to get hired have gotten so overblown. People who I would hire in a second get rejected daily. Because they can't unpack all of this complexity an a 50 minute interview setting.

Last time we talked about this, John hit me with something that I'm still sitting with. The tools we have tend to demo really well. People are buying into all of this marketing promise. But when it doesn't work out, when they realize they were sold snake oil, it's hard to talk about. I think many engineering teams are blaming themselves. Or more likely blaming their managers.
https://indieweb.social/@johnallsopp/112050757204780359

I realize that I haven't even described what things I want to influence people on. That's because I'm speaking generally. This can apply to things both big and small. Politics is the most obvious. (I really wish the voters in SF hadn't just voted to expand police budgets and give them more tools to oppress.)

But it's more niche stuff too. Frontend development is in bad shape right now. And so is interviewing for technical roles. I care about a lot of things.

Here are some things I do feel that I've learned about influencing people:
1. The people most eager to respond will be people who want to argue. I don't spend a ton of time on that.
2. There are always a set of people who like to debate because they find it intellectually stimulating. That's also generally a waste of time. Those folks are unlikely to take any action. Because often don't really have a stance themselves. They just like to talk about things.

3. There are a set of people who have a lot of feelings about the topic. They are *not* the same as the people who just want to argue. They actually care a lot, and their feelings are valid. But sometimes their feelings don't allow them to have a reasonable conversation about the thing.

Basically these folks.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/111931860799229443

This might be a controversial statement. But none of these people are the best groups to influence. They all represent a small minority of the larger population. Not that these folks don't matter. They're just not sufficient to create change.

We want to reach a wider group. Those who we need to convince to do something different if we want to see change. Those are the people I want to impact. But it's tough to know when you're actually in conversation with those folks.

I'll provide one concrete example just for clarity. I really want frontend development to go through a change. The complexity is out of control. The react ecosystem has the most mindshare by far, but is actually the worst solution in my opinion.

What do I want to happen? I want to influence a wider range of developers to choose something besides react for their projects. And I want to help galvanize a movement towards reducing the complexity of these systems in several important ways.

I've ranted about it a lot. (I made a lot of nerds mad in the thread below). The ranting is cathartic. But more importantly it's actually part of my own personal process of collecting my thoughts and organizing them. But I've done enough of that. Now I'm trying to figure out how we can push for change.

Folks like @slightlyoff have been fighting this fight for a long time now. He ends up battling with framework developers. (They all seem to think the complexity they are creating is fine and totally worth it. Go figure.) But he also engages directly with engineering teams. Average engineers who don't care what tools they use. Or don't feel like they have a choice. Or just go with whatever is most popular and thus most marketable right now. Those are the folks we need to influence.

I hope I'm not misrepresenting Alex. I hope he'll let me know if I'm off base. But you don't have to take my word for it. He wrote an excellent blog post about it.
https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/

Yeah this is the primary reason that I'm working hard to be less acerbic in my messages. I know a lot of people agree with me. But if I want those people to share my messages in hopes of influencing their colleagues, it helps if I'm not actively being an asshole.  😂
https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/112050518679394179