# Hedge 318: Parkinson’s Law (and Bastiat)

An episode of [The Hedge](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1473947013), 11 Sep 2026, 35 min.

Audio: https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-318.mp3

It’s time for Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ to gather round the hedge and talk about various items of interest. In this roundtable, we consider what we can learn about product development from Bastiat, and the various ins and outs of Parkinson’s Law. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-318.mp3 download

## Transcript

[0:01] - Join us as we gather around the hedge,
[0:03] - where we dig into technology,
[0:05] - business, and culture with the finest minds in
[0:08] - computer networking.
[0:21] - Well, hello, Yvonne.
[0:23] - It's Hello.
[0:25] - It's been forever.
[0:26] - We miss you.
[0:28] - Well, it has been wild in my world.
[0:31] - And we and we know that you have
[0:34] - another podcast.
[0:36] - I do.
[0:38] - It doesn't mean I love you guys any
[0:40] - any less,
[0:42] - But, I will say time has been a
[0:45] - significant constraint in addition to all the work
[0:48] - stuff is school is back in session. So
[0:50] - we've got marching band, and we've got choir,
[0:53] - and we've got
[0:54] - soccer games and
[0:56] - soccer practice,
[0:58] - and
[0:59] - Yeah. It's wild. Kids who need things.
[1:02] - Yeah. It's wild because I find
[1:05] - that I'm a very structured person. Like, I
[1:07] - need my
[1:09] - get up at the same time, eat at
[1:11] - the same time,
[1:13] - go to bed at the same like, I
[1:14] - need my structure
[1:16] - in order to be effective.
[1:18] - And as as I get busier and busier
[1:20] - and the structure falls apart,
[1:22] - I'm less and less less and less effective,
[1:26] - and that makes me busier and busier.
[1:28] - And I get, like, into this
[1:30] - this, like
[1:31] - Negative cycle. Yeah. I can't I can't get
[1:34] - anything done so that I can rebuild my
[1:36] - schedule to get things done.
[1:38] - You start thrashing.
[1:40] - That's there's there's a there's a name for
[1:42] - that, and it's called thrashing.
[1:45] - It's really it's really been bad the last
[1:47] - month. Like, I'm
[1:49] - forgetting things and not getting things done, and
[1:51] - my calendar's all messed up as everyone knows.
[1:54] - And it's just like it's just because I
[1:56] - just I need to, like,
[1:58] - get some foundational things done
[2:00] - so that I can get back to the
[2:02] - point where I feel like I can structure
[2:05] - what needs to be what what's remaining.
[2:08] - And there's only one way out of it.
[2:10] - It's just to dig your way out, just
[2:11] - to just to bite the bullet,
[2:13] - eat the frog, and just go
[2:16] - get done what needs to get done till
[2:17] - you get to the point where you can
[2:19] - do stuff. So, anyway,
[2:21] - that's been my life. And Tom is here.
[2:23] - Tom has some stuff written on his whiteboard,
[2:26] - but not very much. It's still very white.
[2:28] - And
[2:30] - Audrey is sitting back there enjoying the sunlight.
[2:34] - Yep.
[2:36] - She digs it.
[2:41] - Tom is a Tom is quiet today.
[2:44] - That's alright.
[2:46] - Yeah. It's fine.
[2:47] - Alright.
[2:48] - So
[2:49] - today, we have a couple of articles to
[2:51] - talk about. Let's see where we get with
[2:52] - it.
[2:54] - The first one is on Parkinson's law. Now,
[2:56] - Yvonne, I'm gonna let you start because
[2:58] - I know you said you have a love
[3:00] - hate relationship with this,
[3:02] - and,
[3:05] - I think it's absolutely true what this what
[3:08] - this talks about, but I agree. I think
[3:10] - there's a negative side to it. There's like
[3:13] - it's it's not anyway, go ahead. Yeah. No.
[3:16] - I used to work for a guy who
[3:17] - quoted this. It was the first time I
[3:19] - heard it, and that's maybe why I have
[3:21] - a,
[3:22] - a love hate relationship because of his management
[3:24] - style. But Parkinson's law is the idea that
[3:28] - work expands to fill the time available for
[3:30] - it. So if you have a task and
[3:32] - you have an the the the law states,
[3:34] - basically, if you have a task and you
[3:35] - have an hour to get it done, you'll
[3:37] - get it in an hour. If you have
[3:38] - three hours to get it done, you'll take
[3:40] - the full three hours.
[3:41] - And while I believe that is true,
[3:44] - I have also seen leaders and organizations
[3:48] - go, well,
[3:49] - we're just gonna give you the most unrealistic
[3:52] - timeframe possible
[3:53] - so that you will get it done quickly.
[3:57] - And what that does is creates an environment
[3:59] - where people cut corners,
[4:01] - where they skip steps,
[4:03] - and you leave behind a bunch of
[4:06] - debt
[4:07] - because you're trying to meet an arbitrary
[4:09] - deadline. So while I believe this is true,
[4:13] - when it's used to overly
[4:16] - constrain
[4:17] - the amount of time you have to do
[4:18] - work, I think it can create a really
[4:20] - unhealthy environment.
[4:22] - But I think we're gonna what we're gonna
[4:23] - talk about today
[4:25] - is what happens when you let this law
[4:27] - have its head and you just keep expanding
[4:30] - the time available
[4:32] - to do work.
[4:34] - Yep. Yep.
[4:36] - Yep. You just keep adding people is what
[4:38] - this article talks about. It's like, okay. I'm
[4:40] - just going I'm so busy. I'm gonna hire
[4:43] - five more people to do part of my
[4:45] - work, and then the work expands.
[4:48] - And part of that is just naturally the
[4:50] - larger domain. Right?
[4:52] - You have
[4:54] - more communication requirements the more people you have.
[4:57] - And so you end up spending time
[5:00] - writing memos to one another.
[5:02] - And,
[5:03] - you know, oh, we'll fiddle around, and we'll
[5:06] - we'll make we'll make new rules so we
[5:09] - can coordinate better.
[5:11] - And then people end up spending all their
[5:12] - time talking about the rules,
[5:14] - which, by the way, this is not
[5:16] - this is not restricted to commercial organizations, by
[5:19] - the way. There's
[5:21] - absolutely a problem even in things like the
[5:24] - IETF.
[5:26] - All of these, even standards bodies, do exactly
[5:30] - the same thing.
[5:32] - It also happens, of course, in government. You
[5:34] - get more bureaucracy.
[5:36] - And the the place where it's particularly
[5:39] - damaging to an organization
[5:41] - is
[5:43] - if you hire administrators
[5:45] - or overhead people, and you need operational people.
[5:49] - So don't hear me saying you don't need
[5:51] - them. You need operational people to keep the
[5:53] - wheels on the bus and to manage your
[5:55] - projects and to be sure all your documentation
[5:58] - is up to date and all that. But
[5:59] - if you get too many of of those
[6:01] - folks
[6:03] - relative to the workers,
[6:05] - then those folks just keep making new rules
[6:08] - for the workers.
[6:09] - And the more of those teams you get,
[6:11] - you end up with, like, two or three
[6:13] - workers
[6:14] - being instructed by 10 or 15 bureaucrats.
[6:18] - And then it
[6:20] - becomes a really difficult place for your workers
[6:24] - to get anything done because they're pulled in
[6:25] - multiple directions. There are
[6:27] - multiple directions. There are different people making different
[6:29] - rules
[6:30] - and there's no clarity of purpose and focus.
[6:33] - And I
[6:35] - believe this is where a lot of the
[6:36] - noise in our organizations comes from.
[6:40] - And it's how you get so many
[6:43] - policies
[6:44] - that, oh, we have to make sure that
[6:45] - that thing never happens again.
[6:48] - And so you have some bureaucratic part of
[6:49] - the org just be like, oh, well now
[6:51] - everybody has to follow this process.
[6:54] - But the process is an abstraction
[6:56] - and it's a particularly
[6:58] - leaky abstraction in most orgs.
[7:01] - And so it's just gonna create friction all
[7:03] - over the place. So,
[7:05] - yes, I believe Parkinson's law is true. I
[7:07] - believe it describes a real thing. I think
[7:09] - we have to be careful how we apply
[7:11] - it.
[7:12] - Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the examples
[7:15] - given in this article is in this person
[7:17] - who wrote it, which is Gary Smith over
[7:19] - at, Mind Matters,
[7:21] - is talking about,
[7:22] - the way that's come out in a college
[7:24] - that he teaches at. And he says,
[7:27] - for example, a 12 person wellness task force
[7:31] - organized a guided sound bath experience, Easter egg
[7:35] - painting, bouquet making, and an all day paint
[7:39] - by numbers bash.
[7:42] - Okay.
[7:43] - What has any of that to do
[7:46] - with teaching students at a college?
[7:49] - Not much.
[7:51] - But, you know, it sounds good.
[7:54] - It's stress relief or whatever it is.
[7:57] - And
[7:58] - people think, you know, wow.
[8:00] - That's great.
[8:02] - Right? And by the way, this is this
[8:04] - is part of what you were talking about
[8:05] - before there, Yvonne talking about how
[8:08] - the administrators
[8:09] - overrun the workers.
[8:11] - That is such a common phenomena.
[8:13] - It's insane. You look at any school and
[8:16] - particularly educational and nonprofit
[8:18] - organizations,
[8:19] - it is massive.
[8:22] - I used to when I worked for a
[8:24] - nonprofit many, many years ago,
[8:27] - I was the sole person reporting
[8:31] - to a manager, a senior manager, actually.
[8:34] - He was the sole person
[8:36] - reporting to a director
[8:38] - who was in turn the sole person
[8:40] - reporting to a senior director
[8:42] - who was in turn the sole person reporting
[8:45] - to a vice president.
[8:48] - There were four layers of bureaucracy.
[8:51] - But and what could really be a team?
[8:54] - You know, a a
[8:56] - a single level team.
[8:58] - Yeah. Yep.
[8:59] - Four people, four levels of hierarchy.
[9:02] - Like,
[9:03] - why? And and and the reason is partially
[9:06] - because people like to put on their resumes
[9:09] - that they were the vice president or whatever
[9:11] - it is. And in nonprofits in particular, you
[9:14] - run into this situation
[9:16] - where they're so limited by their budget that
[9:18] - they can't give you a raise,
[9:20] - so they give you a title bump.
[9:23] - And to give you a title bump, there
[9:25] - are rules. You have to have somebody working
[9:27] - for you become a manager.
[9:29] - You have to have a manager working for
[9:31] - you to become a director, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
[9:33] - etcetera. So they fill in the rules,
[9:37] - and
[9:38] - they're just creating
[9:40] - all of this stuff,
[9:42] - that goes on. So yeah.
[9:45] - And and, you know, it's the same thing
[9:47] - here with meetings that are scheduled to last
[9:49] - an hour,
[9:51] - reliably last at least the full hour or
[9:53] - even more. We are absolutely
[9:55] - allergic to ending meetings early for some crazy
[9:58] - reason.
[10:00] - I heard I heard a saying once that
[10:02] - I really like,
[10:03] - the meeting's not over
[10:05] - until everybody has said the thing.
[10:07] - Like, you can
[10:09] - it's not just that the thing has to
[10:10] - be said. It has to be said by
[10:12] - everybody in the room.
[10:15] - There's this paragraph,
[10:18] - in in the article that I love.
[10:21] - It says bureaucrats understandably feel that they need
[10:23] - subordinates, not rivals who will do some of
[10:26] - their work and added bonus, increase their domain
[10:29] - and make them seem more important and powerful.
[10:32] - No matter how many subordinates they hire, Parkinson's
[10:35] - law ensures that they will always need more.
[10:38] - Their subordinates feel the same way and likewise
[10:40] - need their own subordinates creating an ever expanding
[10:43] - Ponzi like pyramid of bureaucrats.
[10:46] - Parkinson
[10:48] - the number of bureaucrats in an organization tends
[10:49] - to increase by five to 7% a year.
[10:52] - That's beats inflation guys. Irrespective
[10:55] - of any variation in the amount of work
[10:58] - if any
[10:59] - to be done. And so I think for
[11:01] - me, like the management takeaway as a leader
[11:05] - is
[11:06] - the sweet spot is always to have your
[11:09] - team to feel like they have a little
[11:10] - bit more work to do than they can
[11:12] - get done.
[11:13] - Right? So once once
[11:15] - because
[11:18] - they're never gonna
[11:22] - say that they're not busy. You know, like,
[11:25] - you ask anybody how are you doing? How
[11:27] - busy are you? What's your workload like? Now
[11:30] - I have people on my team who will
[11:31] - come to me and go, you know, I
[11:32] - can take more, which I deeply appreciate. And
[11:35] - that and and and that is a metric
[11:37] - for me. Right? Because when when they start
[11:39] - saying I cannot take anymore, I know, like,
[11:42] - we're getting close to to having a problem.
[11:44] - But you've got to be careful having people
[11:46] - self report
[11:49] - their capacity,
[11:50] - because they're always gonna say they're busy, and
[11:53] - they're always gonna say they need more help.
[11:55] - And, you know, and I think this
[11:58] - is why it's so hard in large organizations,
[12:01] - if you don't have really good metrics,
[12:04] - to know when it's right to hire. Because
[12:06] - people always say they're too busy and they
[12:08] - need more help. And they will invent work
[12:10] - to fill whatever time that they've got,
[12:13] - whether or not that work needs to be
[12:15] - done or not. And before you know it,
[12:17] - you've got paint by a number of classes
[12:19] - going on all day in the break room.
[12:22] - Right?
[12:23] - Yeah. Oh, no. It's true. Or things that
[12:26] - appear to be really useful, but they're actually
[12:28] - not in the long run. Right? Yeah. I
[12:30] - mean and and this, by the way, is
[12:33] - a is there's another danger here is that
[12:35] - we always tell people
[12:37] - when you walk into an an a new
[12:39] - job or a new organization,
[12:41] - find the thing that's not being done that
[12:43] - you think is useful and go do it.
[12:45] - That's how you add value to start. Right?
[12:48] - The flip side of that is
[12:50] - you can find a lot of stuff that
[12:51] - you think needs to be done,
[12:53] - but really isn't adding value.
[12:56] - And so it's it's a it's a very
[12:58] - it's a very hard balance
[13:01] - to draw down into and and to do
[13:03] - the right thing with. Right?
[13:05] - The there's one particular meeting
[13:09] - that I have been part of in the
[13:10] - last month. I'll I'll broaden the time frame
[13:14] - a little bit.
[13:17] - And I show up for that meeting, and
[13:19] - the people on that call talk about the
[13:21] - same thing every time they meet.
[13:24] - And they voice the same things, and they
[13:26] - talk about the same problem, and it is
[13:28] - the same conversation.
[13:31] - And I think, like, the the last time
[13:33] - I attended that meeting, I had this very
[13:36] - real real
[13:37] - real realization
[13:39] - that this is absolutely
[13:42] - not a place where I can add value,
[13:44] - you know, and maybe what they're trying to
[13:46] - do needs to be done,
[13:48] - but
[13:49] - it's just not for me. And and that's
[13:52] - okay.
[13:54] - Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you just need to back
[13:56] - out and say, I'm not adding value here.
[13:59] - You know? You'll actually make
[14:01] - whatever it is you're backing out of move
[14:04] - faster by not being involved.
[14:06] - Because that's what I'm saying. Be the person
[14:07] - in the room who says the thing. I
[14:09] - need to but, you know,
[14:11] - like Tom was saying, you know, I don't
[14:13] - need to be another person in the room
[14:15] - to say the thing.
[14:17] - That's right. That's exactly right. Or you can
[14:19] - just say the thing at the very first
[14:20] - part of the meeting in the first five
[14:21] - minutes. And then when leave.
[14:24] - And
[14:25] - then
[14:26] - the
[14:27] - That's I don't necessarily recommend that approach.
[14:30] - But
[14:31] - I don't know. There are times when the
[14:33] - only way to win is the only way
[14:34] - to win the game is not to play.
[14:37] - And I and I think we need to
[14:38] - get better at identifying those things.
[14:41] - Yeah. Yeah. It's it's kinda crazy.
[14:45] - So the second article we're gonna talk about
[14:48] - is
[14:49] - kind of in the same realm or the
[14:51] - same area,
[14:53] - in terms of theoretically, like, understanding how things
[14:56] - work,
[14:57] - which is
[14:58] - about Bastiat,
[15:00] - Bastiat.
[15:01] - I don't know. I have to go look
[15:03] - anyway. Whatever.
[15:05] - Who is, of course, a philosopher, and I
[15:07] - should know more about this than I do
[15:09] - because, you know, philosophy degree, all that other
[15:11] - nonsense.
[15:12] - But believe it or not, this is one
[15:14] - person I never actually studied
[15:16] - in any of my any of my work
[15:18] - in this area. Anyway,
[15:21] - which is
[15:23] - very interesting
[15:25] - because
[15:27] - in technology,
[15:29] - we have the concept of the
[15:32] - least viable product,
[15:34] - lowest viable, you know, smallest viable product
[15:37] - in this idea of least
[15:40] - privilege.
[15:41] - Right?
[15:42] - These ideas of least.
[15:44] - In certifications,
[15:46] - it's
[15:47] - the minimally qualified candidate
[15:50] - is is what you would call it in
[15:52] - certifications.
[15:53] - And there is a trap
[15:56] - in this
[15:59] - that when you go after the least,
[16:03] - you're actually deciding
[16:05] - for your customer
[16:07] - what the when like, in a certification, when
[16:09] - you say the minimally qualified candidate
[16:12] - has this blueprint,
[16:14] - what you're actually saying is
[16:16] - companies
[16:17] - want a person
[16:19] - with this set of qualifications.
[16:24] - We we we are determining
[16:25] - what the customer wants
[16:29] - rather than asking the customer.
[16:32] - What do you want?
[16:34] - We're building for what we think
[16:37] - instead of what,
[16:40] - what we what the customer actually wants.
[16:45] - And so this is this is an interesting,
[16:49] - concept that you run into, and it runs
[16:51] - into these things like least privilege. And by
[16:53] - the way, there's a there's a flip side
[16:55] - to this. It's called the the,
[16:57] - subsidiarity
[16:58] - principle,
[17:00] - which I don't I don't know if,
[17:02] - is a very is a very Catholic philosophical,
[17:06] - comes out of Catholic philosophy
[17:08] - that the idea is that you put
[17:12] - the decision making
[17:14] - as close to the data as possible or
[17:16] - as close to the people who
[17:19] - are impacted by the decision as possible.
[17:23] - Right? You you sent you centralize where it
[17:25] - makes sense, but
[17:27] - that's kind of,
[17:29] - the way it works.
[17:30] - So I don't know. Any thoughts,
[17:33] - either of either of y'all about this
[17:37] - thing right
[17:38] - here?
[17:39] - The the headline, I thought, was,
[17:42] - it struck a chord with me, build what
[17:43] - your customer actually wants, not what you've decided
[17:45] - they should want.
[17:47] - And that with what you were just talking
[17:48] - about,
[17:50] - that gets violated when you move the decision
[17:52] - too far away from the data.
[17:55] - Just like just like in networking products, I've
[17:57] - I'm sure you all have seen this, but
[17:59] - I've seen a ton of this. Like, here's
[18:01] - what the customer should want, and we're in
[18:03] - a position to kind of force them force
[18:05] - on them whatever product. So,
[18:07] - eventually, we will we will remake the customer's
[18:10] - requirements in our own image.
[18:12] - And, you know, that's
[18:14] - it's interesting. And, you know, if you if
[18:15] - you're big enough and have enough power in
[18:17] - the relationship, you can you can do that.
[18:19] - You can sort of force customers to do
[18:21] - it your way.
[18:23] - But I have also seen
[18:25] - products that are
[18:27] - that are, you know, they're not what that
[18:29] - that what I need. And so what I
[18:30] - ended up doing as a as a customer
[18:33] - is just buying the biggest, most feature rich
[18:35] - thing so that I could get the two
[18:36] - things that I wanted because because they were
[18:38] - not building the thing that I wanted.
[18:40] - And, you know, I don't know how much
[18:42] - that plays into this, but,
[18:44] - that was kind of my first reaction.
[18:46] - Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it's very
[18:48] - definitely.
[18:49] - And when it comes to
[18:51] - network engineering and the way we approach network
[18:53] - engineering and teams,
[18:56] - more on Yvonne side of the world, these
[18:58] - things still really apply. Right? Like, people want
[19:02] - to say,
[19:03] - oh, I am going to build a magical
[19:05] - controller that takes care of everything on the
[19:07] - control plane
[19:09] - or a magical automation system that's gonna automate
[19:11] - everything, and I don't need the people anymore
[19:14] - or a magical AI system.
[19:16] - And the reason those things don't tend to
[19:18] - work as well as we think they do
[19:20] - is because you are putting an abstraction layer
[19:23] - between
[19:24] - the impacted systems or the impacted people
[19:27] - and the data and the decision point.
[19:32] - You you know, I've often said that when
[19:34] - it comes to as a as a network
[19:35] - design type of principle, when it comes to,
[19:39] - network protocols,
[19:40] - you should have the topology
[19:44] - centered on routing protocols because routing protocols topology
[19:47] - discovery should be in routing protocols because routing
[19:49] - protocols run on the routers.
[19:52] - That's what they do.
[19:54] - But you should not throw policy at a
[19:56] - routing protocol. Why? Because policy is a business
[19:59] - problem.
[20:01] - And the routing protocol is not close to
[20:03] - the business. Right. It's close
[20:06] - to the topology.
[20:07] - You've gotta learn to segregate these concerns and
[20:08] - get them split
[20:12] - up in a way that makes sense.
[20:15] - And I think the same thing is true
[20:17] - of teams. I mean, we just talked about
[20:18] - how it how, you know, work fills the
[20:21] - space that you allocate to it. It's gonna
[20:23] - be the same thing.
[20:25] - If you actually if one way of getting
[20:27] - around,
[20:28] - Parkinson's law is to say,
[20:31] - to put the onus on the team to
[20:34] - accept the responsibility
[20:36] - and the consequences
[20:38] - of the time they're spending
[20:41] - to do stuff.
[20:42] - Right?
[20:43] - It's it's one thing to have a team
[20:45] - that's doing finger painting classes,
[20:47] - and they don't they don't eat the cost
[20:50] - of taking people out of production to do
[20:52] - the finger painting class.
[20:55] - They get to design it and to lead
[20:56] - it and do all the other things.
[20:58] - If you can find some way of making
[21:00] - that team
[21:02] - eat the cost
[21:04] - of taking those people out of production,
[21:08] - all of a sudden, your efficiency, I think,
[21:10] - goes way, way up.
[21:12] - Any thoughts, Yvonne? And I like
[21:14] - So many. Well, so it it there there's
[21:18] - this
[21:19] - crazy thing that happens in product development.
[21:23] - Everybody wants to think they're Steve Jobs.
[21:26] - And what I mean by that is Steve
[21:28] - Jobs was the guy who created a product
[21:31] - that nobody had ever thought of.
[21:33] - Not not maybe they had it to some
[21:36] - degree, but he created a product that the
[21:38] - average customer absolutely was not asking for.
[21:42] - He stood on a stage,
[21:44] - showed it to the world,
[21:45] - and then everybody wanted it. And I think
[21:48] - every product manager,
[21:49] - every builder wants to think they're that person.
[21:53] - Right?
[21:54] - And it does happen. Like, you you catch
[21:56] - lightning in a bottle every now and then.
[21:59] - But the more likely scenario
[22:02] - is that
[22:03] - you're just self absorbed and not listening.
[22:08] - And it is very easy
[22:11] - to build a thing for yourself. And this
[22:14] - happens again, this happens all the time in
[22:17] - bureaucracies
[22:18] - where you okay. So we want we want
[22:21] - our workers doing the work. We don't want
[22:23] - our workers doing the administrative things required to
[22:25] - support the work, so we're gonna hire a
[22:27] - team to do the administrative things. But then
[22:30] - the team that does the administrative things, they
[22:32] - do administrative things. They don't understand that the
[22:34] - work that the workers do. So they start
[22:36] - building stuff to support the workers
[22:38] - that the workers don't need.
[22:40] - Right? The same thing happens in product management.
[22:44] - And
[22:45] - you build a thing based on your architectural
[22:49] - conception of the product,
[22:51] - not how a customer
[22:53] - actually uses it. And there's some really fabulous
[22:56] - work that's been done
[22:58] - to to try and close this loop and
[23:00] - to run workshops
[23:02] - with
[23:03] - great customers to give you good feedback.
[23:06] - But it is a real problem, and it
[23:08] - is a natural human tendency.
[23:10] - And unless you build processes and systems and
[23:13] - you actively fight against it,
[23:16] - you're gonna build for you and not for
[23:19] - your customer. And that's a really dangerous place
[23:22] - to be. And that's why we talk about
[23:23] - things like dog fooding. You know, use your
[23:25] - own product, understand what
[23:28] - people are experiencing.
[23:31] - And it it it does become a real
[23:33] - challenge and it is, I think, the natural
[23:35] - tendency
[23:36] - of I mean, we all see the world
[23:38] - from our perspective.
[23:40] - And unless you're actively trying to see it
[23:42] - from somebody else's, eventually,
[23:45] - when you're not doing that thing anymore,
[23:47] - you lose perspective.
[23:49] - Yeah. The this is one of the reasons
[23:51] - that I like, I I had a few
[23:53] - opportunities in my career to work on a
[23:54] - team that was building their own product, like
[23:56] - their own networking product or whatever.
[23:59] - And,
[24:00] - that like, all all of that, you're building
[24:02] - something for somebody else, and you have all
[24:04] - these issues that you've been describing, Yvonne. When
[24:06] - those just evaporate because the person building and
[24:08] - the person person consuming are the same team,
[24:11] - it is it is beautiful. Like, trade offs
[24:14] - become really, really easy. You make them in
[24:16] - a day. You make them in a single
[24:17] - meeting,
[24:18] - and and you leave all the stuff that
[24:20] - you don't care about off to the side.
[24:21] - And,
[24:22] - you know, it comes with a cost. You
[24:24] - have to be able to build for yourself.
[24:26] - But,
[24:27] - I I don't know. That's been one of
[24:28] - the things that is
[24:30] - you know, and not everybody can do that.
[24:32] - But when you can build for yourself, like,
[24:33] - all that baggage just goes away.
[24:35] - Yeah.
[24:37] - And so At the oh, well, I was
[24:38] - just gonna quote the end of the article.
[24:40] - There's a there's a section called the discipline
[24:42] - of doing less. Yeah. That's what I'm trying
[24:44] - to go to. The best the best systems
[24:46] - are the ones that do the least. A
[24:48] - protocol that tries to anticipate and dictate every
[24:50] - interaction running on top of it isn't a
[24:52] - protocol anymore. It's an application
[24:54] - masquerading
[24:55] - is infrastructure.
[24:56] - It's BGP. You mean? Oh, security infrastructure,
[25:00] - you know, security tooling, right? Like there are
[25:03] - so many, so many
[25:05] - products that we can say
[25:08] - either they started out as platforms
[25:10] - and they still say they're platforms,
[25:12] - but they're actually
[25:14] - applications masquerading as infrastructure. It's such a clever
[25:17] - way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. And and
[25:19] - this goes back to Parkinson's law as well.
[25:21] - Right? In that, you have a team who
[25:24] - wants to expand its scope,
[25:26] - and it sees
[25:28] - this team, the people leading this team or
[25:30] - whatever, see a problem over there that they
[25:32] - think can be solved.
[25:34] - And it doesn't matter that it's been solved
[25:36] - before.
[25:37] - What matters is
[25:39] - it needs to be solved
[25:41] - for the fourteen millionth time or however many
[25:43] - times it is. And they're going to say,
[25:46] - well, look.
[25:47] - I can do this to my existing thing
[25:50] - and make it solve that problem too.
[25:53] - And, Tom, you said BGP.
[25:55] - That's exactly what has happened with BGP.
[25:58] - That's exactly
[25:59] - exactly what's happened, and it happens with teams.
[26:02] - Oh, you know, when I was in high
[26:04] - school,
[26:05] - they had this video that they showed in
[26:07] - the classroom,
[26:08] - And it was this long video about how
[26:11] - this local government said they were having problems
[26:13] - with people cutting down too many trees, so
[26:16] - they built a department of trees. And then
[26:19] - they suddenly realized that when people were cutting
[26:21] - down trees, that was related to streams.
[26:24] - So they expanded the scope of the department
[26:27] - of trees to cover stream. And by the
[26:29] - end of the little video,
[26:31] - this one department was like the department of
[26:33] - trees and streams and,
[26:35] - you know, chickens and Log cabins and large
[26:39] - like, everything.
[26:41] - And this is what this is how
[26:44] - organizations
[26:45] - expand
[26:46] - to fill the time
[26:48] - and the reuse the resources they've been given
[26:51] - is
[26:52] - by doing exactly what it says here. They
[26:54] - become
[26:55] - upper applications masquerading as infrastructure.
[26:58] - Right? Love it.
[27:00] - They like it. There's there's that great quote
[27:02] - by Blaise
[27:03] - Pascal where he says, if I had more
[27:05] - time, I would have written a shorter letter.
[27:07] - Right? That idea that,
[27:09] - and and and there's another concept that, you
[27:12] - know, you're not done writing when you have
[27:14] - no more to add. You're done writing when
[27:16] - you have no more to take away.
[27:18] - Right? This idea that,
[27:21] - making things complicated is actually quite easy. It's
[27:25] - when you can express a thing
[27:28] - simply that meets the requirements, but no more.
[27:31] - That's what requires real mastery.
[27:35] - The the other example I love to think
[27:37] - of is if you watch somebody who's a
[27:39] - master crafts person.
[27:41] - I think of,
[27:43] - carpenters, for example. There's an economy
[27:46] - of movement.
[27:47] - You know, they've done it so much. They're
[27:50] - such an expert
[27:51] - that, like, they don't waste
[27:55] - a,
[27:55] - you know,
[27:57] - a a a finger point or a that
[27:59] - they just move slowly and smoothly
[28:02] - and cleanly
[28:04] - and with precision.
[28:06] - And I I think that is a skill
[28:09] - and a virtue that we've lost in this
[28:12] - move fast and break things kind of culture
[28:14] - that we're in right now.
[28:16] - Yeah. We've given ourselves permission
[28:19] - to break to not be effect efficient
[28:22] - for one thing and
[28:25] - to
[28:26] - try to solve adjacent
[28:28] - problems
[28:29] - in unhealthy ways.
[28:31] - Right? It's like
[28:33] - be narrow.
[28:35] - The way your network or the way your
[28:37] - organization, the way a team is effective, the
[28:40] - way your network is effective is by being
[28:42] - narrow.
[28:44] - Do something small. Do it well.
[28:47] - Do it quickly, efficiently,
[28:49] - and,
[28:51] - you know, have the boundaries.
[28:55] - That's
[28:56] - the way it, you know, it should be.
[28:59] - And, like, in the last paragraph here, he
[29:01] - says, every failure next to last paragraph, he
[29:03] - says, every failure above is the same failure.
[29:06] - A well meaning team that confused the two
[29:08] - layers and mistook
[29:10] - writing more rules
[29:12] - for building a better society,
[29:14] - but you can go further and say or
[29:16] - building a better protocol
[29:18] - or a better system, a better anything.
[29:21] - Right?
[29:23] - Resist the urge to overengineer.
[29:26] - Constrain the center.
[29:28] - Trust the edges.
[29:30] - And this goes back to subsidiarity.
[29:32] - Right?
[29:34] - Constrain the center. Trust the edges.
[29:37] - Let the data go out there. Let people
[29:39] - make decisions.
[29:41] - Let them do the right thing,
[29:43] - but give them very narrow
[29:46] - task that need to be done
[29:49] - and, you know, let them do it.
[29:52] - There's a there's a great book by general
[29:55] - Stanley McChrystal that talks about and it's really
[29:58] - an organizational
[29:59] - transformation
[30:00] - book. And he talks about how they had
[30:02] - to trans
[30:04] - transform the military during a time when it
[30:06] - was it was very top down and when
[30:08] - they started fight fighting in Afghanistan
[30:11] - and and these wars with,
[30:14] - more gorilla type fighters
[30:17] - that things were happening so fast out at
[30:20] - the edges
[30:21] - that central command could not respond. And he
[30:24] - talks about
[30:25] - these principles
[30:27] - and how you have to push
[30:29] - every bit of decision making you can down
[30:32] - to the edges
[30:33] - because that's where the data is. It's another
[30:35] - example. It's a military example, by the way,
[30:38] - team of teams by general Stanley McChrystal. If
[30:40] - you have an interest, fabulous book.
[30:43] - This is the same principle. Right? And and
[30:45] - these principles apply across across so many different
[30:48] - domains and different circumstances. Right. And that's that's
[30:50] - why we love them.
[30:51] - Yeah. That's right. They're not just organizational principles.
[30:54] - They're system design principles. They're not just system
[30:57] - design principles. They're organizational principles.
[30:59] - This is the way the world
[31:02] - works
[31:03] - well.
[31:04] - This is this is how you make things
[31:06] - work well is you distribute
[31:08] - distribute
[31:09] - decisions
[31:10] - to where the data lives and
[31:13] - where
[31:14] - the system or the person
[31:16] - is going to feel the effect
[31:20] - of making the wrong decision.
[31:23] - Yes. That oh, that's a whole another topic
[31:26] - we could talk about. Right? Is,
[31:29] - being able to make decisions without feeling the
[31:31] - consequences of those decisions,
[31:33] - that's that's where you run into all kinds
[31:36] - of challenges. You know? There's this great quote
[31:39] - by Buffett where he's talking about, you know,
[31:42] - fixing the deficit. He's like, I could fix
[31:44] - that in an afternoon. He said, just make
[31:46] - it where if you don't have a budget
[31:48] - balanced budget, the legislators can't run for office
[31:51] - again.
[31:52] - Right? Because you're you're putting the consequences on
[31:54] - the people making the decisions that Mhmm. That
[31:57] - cause the outcomes you don't want.
[32:00] - But, of course, we could get into self
[32:02] - regulation and all those things too. Yeah. But
[32:04] - we we won't go there, but
[32:07] - the point
[32:08] - is the people who
[32:10] - suffer the consequences of the decisions
[32:13] - need to be the people that make the
[32:14] - decisions
[32:15] - because
[32:18] - if you don't feel the pain, you don't
[32:19] - ever have any need to change.
[32:21] - That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah.
[32:24] - So I think we covered those two. Yeah.
[32:27] - Good stuff. I think we did well.
[32:30] - We'll pat ourselves on the back. We'll give
[32:32] - ourselves a better a bigger job to do.
[32:34] - We'll expand our domain.
[32:37] - That's right. Yeah. We didn't we didn't fill
[32:39] - all the time, Russ. Come on. How much
[32:41] - time do we have? We need to fill
[32:42] - all the time.
[32:45] - Did we all say the thing?
[32:48] - I always say the thing.
[32:51] - I think we did.
[32:52] - We did.
[32:54] - Awesome. Alright. Yvonne, where can people find you
[32:57] - if they want to? Tell us about your
[32:58] - podcast and if there's other places where people
[33:01] - can Yeah. I'm I'm
[33:03] - I'm kind of on social media these days,
[33:05] - which means I check it periodically. So, if
[33:08] - you wanna find me Yvonne Sharp on LinkedIn,
[33:10] - I also check-in,
[33:12] - on Twitter x. Every now and then, you
[33:13] - can find me at Sharp Network. And then
[33:15] - the other podcast is The Cloud Gambit where
[33:18] - we talk about
[33:19] - cloud,
[33:20] - AI, and some, you know, interesting news from
[33:23] - time to time. So yeah. Check that out.
[33:25] - That's on packet pushers. Right? It is. Okay.
[33:28] - It is. Just making sure people know how
[33:30] - to find it. Alright.
[33:32] - Tom.
[33:34] - LinkedIn.
[33:35] - Okay. Well, that was easy.
[33:38] - I'm easy. I'm easy.
[33:40] - We should prerecord that. Just I could just
[33:43] - press a button.
[33:47] - Alright. I'm Russ White. You can find me
[33:49] - here at the hedge@rule11.tech.
[33:51] - You can find me on x every now
[33:53] - and again at routing geek, on LinkedIn every
[33:56] - now and again. I don't check them all
[33:57] - the time, but I'm there from time to
[33:59] - time. If you have any ideas
[34:01] - of articles you'd like us to talk about,
[34:03] - questions you'd like to ask or whatever, please
[34:05] - let us know.
[34:06] - Let one of the three of us know,
[34:07] - and we will try to set up a
[34:09] - time to think about it or talk about
[34:10] - it on an episode. And we know we
[34:13] - live in an attention driven economy, so we
[34:15] - thank you for living listening all the way
[34:17] - to the bitter end of this episode of
[34:19] - The Hedge, and we will catch you
[34:24] - next

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