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Abstractions are Important 4 – Personal Interactions

An Announcement

I’ve enlisted the help of freelance editor Amanda Muledy to copy edit this blog. The content will not be altered in terms of substance; rather, she’ll be correcting grammar and spelling mistakes and the like. She’ll even know whether or not the semi-colon I just used was some kind of faux pas.

She has started on my oldest posts and will be working her way toward the newest ones and we’ll eventually probably work to a state where I send them to her prior to publication. So, if you see mild edits to content here and there, that’s the reason for it. If you’re interested in her services or more information along these lines, she has contact info on her blog.

And now back to your regularly schedule post…

Beyond the Code

In the second post in this series, I described in detail an abstraction that had nothing to do with programming: the pizza parlor with delivery service. Today I’d like to revisit abstractions in the real world, but not focus on static institutions. Instead, I’d like to talk about the ad-hoc abstractions that we form in one another’s lives as we work collaboratively.

Huh?

When we work with other people, what we generally do is offer abstractions to one another for the purpose of getting things done more efficiently. Have you ever said something like “you prep the chicken, and I’ll start the grill”? This is an ad-hoc, process-based abstraction. What does prepping the chicken entail? Maybe a dry drub, chopping it into chunks, etc. But, the interesting thing is that the person starting the grill doesn’t care at all, as long as it’s taken care of. Likewise with the starting of the grill. Is it a charcoal grill? What kind of charcoal to use? None of that matters to the person prepping the chicken.

This is an example of a good process abstraction, and these types of abstractions are the basis for the concept of effective teamwork. They allow people to work in parallel and to be more efficient than they would be working on their own, assuming that the tasks are not temporally dependent. Sure, one person could prep the chicken and also start the grill, but two people doing it simultaneously will go faster. It would be a different story if the two tasks were interdependent or mutually exclusive. “Hey, you clean the bottom of the grill while I start it” wouldn’t work very well.

So efficient teamwork requires tasks that are relatively orthogonal and participants providing abstractions to one another. (It is certainly possible to have abstraction in sequential tasks, but that’s not nearly as interesting). Without orthogonality, the team members would step on one another’s toes while completing their tasks, and without abstractions there wouldn’t be any productivity boost.

For Example

Last week, I wanted to order a server and confirm that our MSDN licensing covered the server software that I wanted to install. Management paired me with someone whose job it was to worry about these things so that I could focus on my job of being a programmer. Things started to go a bit off the rail at this point, though. I got an email about computer wholesalers and the names of salespeople at these wholesalers, distrust of Microsoft and its licensing and any number of other things that weren’t of interest to me — things that should have been abstracted away from me. My goal was simple — get a computer and install server software on that computer.

I responded to this email by saying that I appreciated all of the information, but I didn’t really want to worry about all that stuff. I just wanted the computer. I did ask if it made sense for me to call one of these wholesaler employees directly, which I would have been happy to do, since this would have provided me with an actual abstraction. The response to this email was another torrent of information that was tangentially related at best (overseas latency issues, server hard drive configuration snags, etc) , but no servers ordered and no contact information provided. This went on for several emails more emails in the same fashion (the situation is now on hold for other reasons, so there is no resolution, either).

What I had was a consistent failure to provide an abstraction, and thus I had no actual help with anything. If I have to stop working at my assignment (being a programmer) to deal with an IT assignment (ordering a server) than the person whose responsibility is the latter is providing no abstraction and thus, functionally useless to me. In this example, the time I spend reading and responding to emails could better have been spent calling Microsoft and/or the wholesaler directly. Either way, I couldn’t focus on my job, so at least something productive could have come out of it.

Why Does This Happen?

As you read through this, you’re probably both asking yourself why anyone would do this and also thinking of people who have provided a bad abstraction to you in the past. That is to say, it’s often incomprehensible to a problem solver not really mired in office politics, but it’s also a common behavior. I posit that there are three reasons someone will provide a bad ad-hoc personal abstraction:

  1. Passive-aggressive desire to sabotage an initiative
  2. Earnest over-exuberance or over-inquisitiveness
  3. Simple incompetence

The last of these is the simplest and least interesting. If someone is simply incompetent at a task, they will serve poorly as an abstraction. If you were to ask me to ask someone for the time of day in Mandarin, I would respond with either “how do you ask someone the time of day in Mandarin?” or “will you do it for me?”. I am simply ill-suited for this task since I don’t speak that language.

The second of these is what results from people who are nervous about responsibility or perhaps overly excited about it, but are willing to put in a good faith effort. Perhaps you ask me to cook you an omelette, and I respond by saying, “how much pepper would you like in it; do you care if the eggs are whisked for 20 seconds or do you want 30; these are those brown eggs – is that alright; do you want me to use PAM or oil; etc?” I mean well, but I’m defeating the purpose of what you asked of me. By bogging you down in these details, I’m forcing you to spend more time helping me than was your intent and I might well be annoying you. This sort of behavior might result from me really wanting you to enjoy the omelette or me being afraid that you’ll yell at me if I mess something up, but there’s no ill intent.

The first item in the list is probably the most interesting from a realpolitik perspective in a collaborative setting, though it isn’t because it’s a sophisticated technique. Children learn to do this at an early age and employ it without any subtlety. Ask a child to clean his room and, after some initial whining and the gears start turning:

Child: Where does this go?
Parent: In the drawer over there.
Child: But I can’t reach!
Parent: Get a stool.
Child: Where are the stools?
Parent: There’s one on the other side of your bed.
Child: It’s heavy!

The goal here is to feign simple incompetence to get out of the task, which is a rather natural thing for a child to do since parent-child relationship often doubles as teacher-student. The child banks on the parent becoming so exasperated that he or she finally exclaims “Oh, for the love of… I’ll just do it!” This gets interesting in adult interaction dynamics since it necessarily involves a sacrifice of perceived status. Whoever does this must be willing to accept a role of subordinate status and often to move down the path toward learned helplessness. If you work with me, and I respond to all of your requests by saying that I don’t know how to do things, it’s only a matter of time before you and others begin to question my competence and value in my role.

As a result, the best way to get out of work (or sabotage an initiative in general if the motivation is something other than laziness) is not to offer oneself sacrificially as a buffoon, but instead to exaggerate the difficulty of the task with which one is presented:

Oh, sure, I’ll make you an omelette, but there’s really a lot to think about here. You have to consider what kind of pan you want, what size and color of egg, the quanity of pepper involved… I mean, there are a lot of variables here. Don’t worry, though — I’ll make some inquiries as to what the best kind of ingredients are and get back to you tomorrow.

Notice that it’s very similar to the over-exuberant explanation, but with a bit more of an air of authority. It also subtly implies that the earliest possible completion of the task renders it not worth doing — who wants to wait 24 hours for their breakfast? This shift from excited questioning to authoritative is often a giveaway, but sometimes these motivations may even come off as identical. They’ll certainly be similar and it would be a shame to accuse someone of some sort of malfeasance when the explanation is benign. It’s genuinely hard to distinguish items (1) and (2) in someone else in a vacuum without track records and understanding of possible ulterior motives.

Avoiding All Of It

And, most diplomatic people will avoid this sort of accusation because it is rude and assuming. They’ll act on the surface as though you’re simply excitable. But, here’s the catch — they’ll assume that you’re passive-aggressive if it happens too often and if it’s a regular source of impediment. So really, this type of behavior, even when benign has at best a short term benefit with a long term cost. People will probably assume that you deliberately make yourself an obstacle, but even if you’re fortunate enough to avoid that, they will assume that you are incompetent and/or annoying.

Do you really want any of those labels? I don’t, myself. So, I’d stress that you make sure to be a good abstraction for others when asked. Make sure that your work makes things simpler for other people and removes obstacles from their path, rather than adding them. And, if you really are ill-suited for a task, explain why and try to think of something you can offer instead to be helpful. It really does parallel code in a lot of ways — you should hide complexity from others and present them with simple but meaningful choices.

Good abstractions in code, good abstractions in life — a good way to live.