March of the flaming squirrls

I have spent over 18 years working in technology. At that time, it still surprised me how many people thought what I did was magic.  Furthermore, those people think setting up complicated databases and web systems is like plugging in a lamp and turning on a switch.  This creates all sorts of insane and absurd situations in the workplace.

When I was young, one of the critical measures of success was the ability to handle large piles of work with deadlines.  The metaphor my teachers used was the story of a squirrel.  Squirrels hibernate during the winter months, but they still need to eat, so during the summer months, they spend the majority of their time gathering food to store. They also binge eat in the fall so they have enough fat to hibernate.

I took this metaphor to heart and applied it to my undergraduate and graduate work.  Each day I spent a little time reading, writing, and gathering nuggets of information to help myself become successful.  It worked, and it seems like a good strategy.  You do little things today so that the big challenges of tomorrow don’t seem so daunting.  Then, I became a software professional.

The technology world has too much work and not enough qualified people to do the job.  So, instead of small efforts adding up to eventual success, it takes super-human effort to prevent getting swamped by the demands of the business.  It is like being a squirrel caught in a forest fire.  You still have to gather food but you also confront the grim reality of painful death.

I am spending a lot of time telling business people why these “fires” are bad for the company.  As author Jimmy Leppert says, “…firefighting creates a culture of arsonists.”  In my mind, where there are arsonists, there are millions of dollars of destruction and countless maimed and dead animals.  The software developers become squirrels set ablaze.

I blame a lot of things for this.  Project are funded poorly with a fixed bid mindset.  Americans do a poor job of training people to be engineers and technical professionals.  Many business leaders who manage software projects have no practical knowledge about how software works.  Finally, short-term thinking among business investors and leaders exacerbates this forest fire thinking.  Thus, your organization, a fragile ecosystem resembling a forest, is beset by arsonists with flame throwers and chain saws.

I do not have any cures for these problems but I do want to point them out so people who are smarter and more thoughtful can fix them. To fix a problem, you must understand what is causing it.  So if you see your technology staff running around like flaming squirrels, you should be smart enough to kick the arsonists out of your organization.

Until next time.