DevOps Knows Better but Doesn’t Do Better (Yet?)
If I had a dollar for every time that a tech leader with their heart in the right place, stopped their efforts to better the developer’s lives -and ultimately productivity- because they were told off by HR, I’d afford to donate our software forever.
I haven’t said much in a while for a few reasons - some are good as we are developing cool things - a Belonging tool and a NeuroSpicy@Work platform and there are many excited product team design meetings and intense podcast conversations connected to both- and a few not that brilliant. You see, I’ve been feeling rather dejected with our “industry”. I had such great hopes for us but looking at the state of the workplace, the overall adoption of our software meant to augment the Human Work, and the mental and emotional state of tech teams drowning in Human Debt™ everywhere, I had to concede they may have been in vain. At least for now.
Of the many industries I have traversed over the past 20 years, the tech world is the only one where there is concern with human behaviour by any other employees than the HR department. Take DevOps - something that could have easily been technical only and yet it turned into an exploration of culture and arguably the most important one there is. It is what fascinated and attracted me to the Tech world in the first place and sparked my fetish for agility. Over the years I’ve met so very many so called “techies” who were more interested in human aspects than many leaders in other functions and industries and that still stands and is amazing.
What difference does that make though?
That’s right, that’s the kicker that occurred to me a few months ago and made me take a step back from my unwavering admiration of the DevOps discourse and the Human-focused side of Tech.
There is no real action. The exploration is entirely academic and there is a lack of willingness to “speak truth to power” and fix systemic issues. What’s worse? We don’t admit this to be the case.
“Agilists” and “Techies” are the first ones to understand Human Debt and yet what do they really and truly do about it? Loads at an individual level, yes, but at an enterprise level? At the level where it makes a difference en masse? That’s right, not much.
If I had a dollar for every time that a tech leader with their heart in the right place, stepped down from their efforts to better the developer’s lives -and ultimately productivity- and start a program, buy software or install a new practice of daily Human Work because they were told off by HR, I’d afford to donate our software forever. Incidentally, it has taken a lot of donating to get needles moving in this industry because of this very reason. This eventual backing off of those DevOps enthusiasts who know what’s what, when challenged (and at times threatened) by those who don’t either know, or care.
For a long time I had thought that Agility itself is the crux and the key because once every corner of the planet would be truly Agile in their heart of hearts, there is no way they could keep being so without the human work it necessitates to breed genuine psychological safety and true communication. In my overly optimistic dreams, this is why Agile would have changed Culture at large as an unlikely agent of transformative new ways. It’s what I wrote about in “Tech-Led Culture” - a book that very (very!) few have read partly because I’m a horrid marketer of my own stuff, and partly because it’s too heavy and carries this premise of a duty for change I envisioned us all to have.
To me, having seen the light on the topic of the importance of lowering Human Debt in enterprises, there is no way that vision wouldn’t have emboldened everyone to carry on fighting for genuine major change of culture.
Nowadays, call it cape fatigue or bitterness, but I don’t see it that way any more. I no longer believe that techies will be the “Human Debt Fighters and HumanWork Advocates” that we desperately need to apply all they know and feel to change workplace culture.. What I mistook for a combination of slow awareness building combined with an intense period of workplace changes, is in fact something else entirely that will stop most techies or DevOps enthusiasts from boldly pushing large scale cultural change that they have proof is needed at an organisational level. That something else is likely a combination between intense Impostor Syndrome on these topics and sheer self-preservation in a world ever-more-driven by dread and control.
