Tog's Paradox

Make things easier and improve productivity, because we humans can do more with technology. Especially relevant in the current AI dialogue around what it's going to do to different industries.

> Consider an HR platform that automates payroll and performance management, freeing up HR staff from routine tasks. HR teams will need to justify what they do the rest of the time...

This quote, though, is one I'd like to further mull: added software complexity that is the result of job justification.

I have found that some folks like to be "high priest gatekeepers." They want to be The Only One That Understands The System, so they are indispensable, and it also strokes their own ego.

If possible, they might customize the system, so they are the only ones that can comprehend it, and they can often be extremely rude to folks that don't have their prowess.

I suspect that we've all run into this, at one time or another. It's fairly prevalent, in tech.

I agree that that happens, but I suspect a lot of times it's not a conscious decision by the person who is doing the gatekeeping. The end result is more or less the same, but often those people feel like they are the only one that understands, not that they intentionally want to be the only one that understands.

It seems like a trivial difference, but having some empathy for these people and finding out which is which makes it possible to deal with at least a subset of these people.