@tanepiper @microwavenby @RuthMalan very much this.

Thing about being a glue person in enterprise is that you have much better visibility onto the difference between what's actually being supplied and what's being demanded than executives do. Some executives make a point of leveraging that. I've even known a couple of "management by walking around" executives who were themselves glue people! But if you're trying to build power instead of product, glue people are definitely the enemy.

@realn2s @microwavenby @RuthMalan I've used the term "glue people" before - picked up from somewhere - for those people who've been with an organisation long enough, and have the right personality, to know who you should ask and how you should ask them.

I liked the point earlier in the thread about avoiding implications of "adhesion" or slowing things down... they're like oil or grease, not glue? But "lubricators" has unfortunately connotations, any preferred terms?

@microwavenby @RuthMalan
Thinking about this made me realise that there a deep arrogance and bias shown in this story.

If "glue people" were bad but get rehired by managers, this would mean Eric Schmidt hired bad managers. So, he should maybe stay out of hiring

If Eric Schmidt assumes he hired competent managers, and they rehire the "glue people" for a reason.
He should stay out of their hiring process.

If you don't consider that you can be wrong or maybe not have the complete picture, you fail to see this contradiction

@darkuncle @microwavenby @RuthMalan A glue persons job is to hide information from doing the work, a glue person will say they hide what the people doing the work that will distract them, politics etc. However, "glue" people aren't actually contributing to the work directly, so the ability to know what the team needs to know is always going to be limited, because they don't have the skillset to know.

For every named role you create you don't change the work that needs to be done, you just move the tasks around, and by moving the relationships to a single person, so deprive everyone else in the team from building those relationships, and you need those relationships to write code well.

@RuthMalan

You're welcome!

Great fun for me to find a second person on Earth who enjoys this thinking

So kind that you speak your enjoyment out loud

I'm way curious about my own career future 😛

Here are more complete citations =>

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April Wensel tweets out her thoughts in some years and not others. This year of her thoughts is up at https :// twitter . com/aprilwensel

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I've not followed Dan Na so closely but he interacts with Charity Majors & Will Larson

Dan spoke this thought that I quoted at or near March/2021 https :// twitter . com/dxna/status/1368926037275533318

I first heard Charity speak in an evening conference of lightning talks in San Jose

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