Gruntwork and drafting monkeys

As an educator, I am biased towards seeing the potential of all my students. I like to think that I normally see people not for what they are but for what they could be. Unfortunately, seeing only potential can make us underestimate the developmental value of ordinary work..

As a society, I have recently come to think that we have slightly missed the point of work as of late. It’s not only about self-realization but rather on the usefulness of the individual to the collective. 

It reflects, normally, on the compensation we receive. And, speculatively, it can be the reason why many looking for a job don’t say “I’m not fulfilled” but “I feel without purpose”. Work serves higher social functions and ultimately allows full participation in the structure of society.

I understand that we normally speak about job displacement as part of the AI discussion, but I personally suspect the issue is much larger and may actually be a sign of an economy entering recession. I even wrote about it in What we have is a money problem – _BlnkTerminal. 

I suspect that, for investors, it is easier to accept that people are being laid off because of automation than to acknowledge that the economy is steadily compressing.

That being said, this piece is not about that, but rather about the value of work. Specifically, gruntwork. The one that makes me efficient enough to challenge AI.

I want to be clear that I am not advocating against individuals seeking fulfillment in their work, but rather that it is wrong to discard perfectly useful tasks as dehumanizing simply because they are not the most creative, or because we, as experts, have lost sight of what it took us to build our credentials.

When leadership brings in new talent, there is indeed a risk of overlooking the value and capabilities these individuals can contribute to an organization. 

But there is nothing riskier than solutions proposed without a clear understanding of the problems they are meant to solve. Unfortunately, that understanding is normally gained in production, not in the boardroom.

As a society, we might have to redefine—or at least remove some of the stigma surrounding—gruntwork. All types of work are useful, or they would not be paid for. And a true senior understands this, as in some instances these tasks provide a safety net for companies.

For example, as I was building my career, I spent countless hours checking mistakes in plans and applications. I also spent a great deal of time on projects with little glory attached to them (which it turns out is the vast majority). This type of work is so repetitive that the industry moniker for it is “drafting monkey.”

Had it not been for my “monkey work”, though, I would not have developed the capacity to spot on the fly mistakes that my students and senior quality assurance require. I got fed up, but became so good at it that it unknowingly established the foundation of my career.

As a now more senior architect, would I do grunt work, or even find it rewarding? Probably not. But the reason I can quote building regulations from the top of my head is the time I spent fixing the minor issues that my intellectual arrogance now dismisses.

It made me cautious, too, as my seniors were always kind enough to point out the many risks hidden behind my seemingly inconsequential choices. Maybe we should focus more on rewarding better the value people create today than on the unrealized potential we hope they may one day achieve.In the end, after a bit more reflection (and I know many will disagree with me here), we should remember the maxim: “work dignifies man”—not “creative work” or “extremely innovative work.” Simply work. Useful to someone else and contributing to the whole of society.

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So if you rotate a bunch of pre shared keys, do the old ones become post shared keys? And the ones you install are just shared keys?

#sysadmin #gruntWork

Minor vent about #FOSS usability...

Some FOSS #software is pretty darned good in some or most respects, but then you run into a sharp edge or missing battery that makes you #facepalm.

The #GIMP, besides the #problematic name, has one such. It is widely lauded for its abilities when #printing images. I don't print much in the way of photography or fine art, so it's not something I personally notice, but a lot of people swear by it.

However, if you search the web for "how to print a large #image over multiple #pages", you will find that the only way to do it is to cut the image up into separate, smaller images, and then each chunk can be printed to a page. You have to basically do this by hand (there's a function that can chop an image into pieces according to your settings, but that's it as far as automation goes), and if you want to fit the resulting pages together, you've got to make sure you preserve the DPI across multiple images, and ensure there's no overlap or missing bits, etc.

There are a *ton* of results for people looking for how to accomplish this, and all the replies are "You can't, do it by hand". Considering how trivial the necessary operations are for a computer, it's a #bizarre #omission.

#SharpEdge #MissingBattery #manual #feature #missing #MissingFeature #GruntWork

Merci à celleux qui ont partagé mon article sur le passage en licence #BSL des produits #Hashicorp

Cet article de #gruntwork explique mieux que moi les problématiques induites par ce changement, je vous invite à le lire

https://blog.gruntwork.io/the-future-of-terraform-must-be-open-ab0b9ba65bca