Kevin BeaumontCan't wait for all the orgs to fire everybody after buying generative AI tools and discovering about glue people the hard way.
Krishean Draconis
@GossiTheDog oh hey look it's my job
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reallyJim@GossiTheDog "glue people". What a great term! I've known many of them in my career.
Bakunin Boys@reallyjim @GossiTheDog wait is it glue or oil???
Christian Berger DECT 2763@GossiTheDog Well luckily most companies do not actually provide anything important. If a company like Google or Facebook "stops working" and simply "dead spins" in place... there is little damage caused by that. The companies will go even if no work is done there until it fails eventually. For management this isn't an issue as any failure can be attributed to "changing market conditions".
Admiral SnackbärMaybe I'm too cynical, but it's likely not management or shareholders suffering in these cases, but workers.
Management will simply force workers to somehow get things to function again, no matter the human cost.
@AdmSnackbar @GossiTheDog Well in some countries, where labor isn't regulated, this could be a problem, and yes, even if it is, having a job where you cannot accomplish anything is extremely taxing. I have experienced that myself.
Even when it is regulated this can be a problem. It already is.
groff 🇺🇦@GossiTheDog This is why long established engineering firms get their recently retired employees to come in for 5-10 days a month. Just for a brief transition period of around 10 years or so.
Chris RealEmbarassment with the knowledge that mere "employees" have become indispensible often turns to resentment.
All of this would be dealt with by an analyst, but these self-dreaming 'entrepenreurs' never seek self-reflection
Alex@GossiTheDog As someone who has been an "expert" at some undocumented tasks at work: it's not only the company that loses knowledge. I was once asked about a system I designed and implemented entirely on my own and couldn't answer a single question over the phone two years later.
Implicit knowledge has a strange affinity to fade away, unnoticed.
Steven Reed@a_lex_ander @GossiTheDog loss of situational context definitely doesn't help :(
Zorin =^o.o^=@a_lex_ander @GossiTheDog I had a moment like that at work recently. I've been there forever at this point.
I was trying to fix an issue that was caused by a bug in an ancient Perl script. As I was looking through it I kept asking myself “Who wrote this crap?”
Then I saw my own name in the header with a year starting in "19”.
@zorinlynx @GossiTheDog I seriously hope that happens to me in 20 years.
JimTheWhyGuy ❌👑@GossiTheDog But but but ... The agents of our new $500M investment in AgenticAI should handle being the glue ... Right?
Right?
Ryek Darkener
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven@GossiTheDog As one of those 'glue people', I always get annoyed whenever I see organizations focus heavily on reviews based on "impact". It misses too much of how organizations truly function.
Philippa Cowderoy@GossiTheDog They think turning people into literal glue is a good enough replacement, y'know?
lemgandiEvery time a person dies, a library burns.
When someone leaves an organization, they take all the knowledge they have accumulated with them.
Stuck HereCultural knowledge. Everyone jumps on the software side of business implementation when it comes to this loss but it's just as much about losing history as it is about the tech of things.
Knowing that xyz was tried years ago and that the results cost more time and money. Knowing that it's the investment in a certain nonprofit and the volunteer hours that's truly keeping the client. Knowing that leasing a piece of office space keeps your most valuable workers. Etc.
Maxilo OveritEverything a company values should be documented in a way that new hires can easily learn.
When a corporation talks about "values" though, they often don't include "preservation and sharing of comprehensive knowledge" as one of them.
And then they lay people off, bring in contractors, or outsource knowledge based operations, and wonder why nobody knows what's going on.
AI is going to be like that. People will only operate at the highest levels. You know, the levels where they push a button and expect everything to be automatically how they assume it should be.
Xevious@GossiTheDog Glue people is new phrase on me, but I like it. Funnily enough I heard about one only yesterday. He retires in less than two weeks.
Cedar Fen Farm
Cedar Fen FarmThis is what destroyed 3M. And likely Boeing after McNerny got there.
Wade Naveja
Howard Chu @ Symas@GossiTheDog when I left UMich for JPL they had to hire 5 people to take over my work. And tbf, those 5 could've used a bit more help.
Jargoggles@GossiTheDog
If you are this person, there might be a temptation to make sure you're documenting all of the different threads you're holding together. If you're in an organization you deeply care about, that's probably something worth following through on.
However, if you're not in that extremely rare circumstance and it is just a job to you, there is hardly any better job security than being the only one who knows how to keep the gears turning. Even if they fuck up and let go, there's plenty of money to be made as a consultant at several times the hourly rate they were paying you when they find out.
Pete Prodoehl 🍕@jargoggles @GossiTheDog LOL... I was made redundant at a job once and they hired me to come in and train someone who was taking over the critical stuff I did even though my "position was eliminated" or something. I charged an appropriate rate.
@jargoggles @GossiTheDog Another job made me redundant then hired me as a contractor for the next 5 years. The funny thing is that I used all the documentation I wrote while I was an employee, that outlined exactly how to do the things I did, but they had no one there that could do it, so... they paid me a lot to do it.
@jargoggles @GossiTheDog And I'm pretty sure I was made redundant at one job because someone who played the game got close to the new director and fed them lies about what I was doing or not doing.
I wasn't a loudmouth or showoff, I just quietly did my work, did it well, documented the hell out of it, and moved on to the next project.
My direct boss knew what I did but she was also made redundant.
@rasterweb @GossiTheDog
The fact that there *always* seems to be a much higher budget for contractors than employees to do exactly the same stuff really dispels the myth that capitalism drives efficiency.
The fact that there *always* seems to be a much higher budget for contractors than employees to do exactly the same stuff really dispels the myth that capitalism drives efficiency.
@jargoggles @GossiTheDog But companies can save money by using contractors instead of full-time employees because of rules and loopholes and whatnot...
@jargoggles @GossiTheDog when I manage a team, one thing that's hugely important to me is to prevent this exact situation. I aim for deliberate redundancy. Every task should be able to be performed well by two people. And I'm transparent about why: Business continuity is important. I aim to protect my people, and in return I do not tolerate hoarding. It's toxic, not just to the employer, but to those left behind when the hoarder leaves. I insist on a culture of mutual respect. If that's not the way you want to play, I don't care how good you otherwise are, I don't want you on my team.
That respect flows both ways.
@mweiss @GossiTheDog
Unless you can *guarantee* that your direct reports will never get laid off, then the respect does not flow both ways. That is to say, there is someone above you who does not see your employees as people - they see budgets, KPIs, quarterly reports, etc.
If you are told, "We are eliminating head count by X, give me a list by the end of the week," your personal respect means a lot less to someone than whether or not your team can adequately function without them.
You are looking at a dramatically unequal power dynamic where someone is using probably the only effective tool they have - the irreplaceability of their labor - to protect their livelihood against an uncaring machine that has no qualms about financially ruining them just to move the stock price a point or two and thinking, "How can I make this about me."
I've managed teams, too. Part of the way I show them respect is by respecting that the most important part of the job to them is the fact that it pays the bills. If I can't factor in the fact that their primary goal is to make sure they can keep paying their bills, then I don't respect them as a person, I only respect the use I can get out of them.
Go back to LinkedIn.
@jargoggles @GossiTheDog I cannot make that guarantee. And I'm always very upfront about that, too. Of course I know they need to pay the bills, and that's important. The point of this entire thread is that companies ignore the hoarding and lay these people off anyway. So obviously the hoarding isn't protecting them, is it?
The respect comes from not pretending that the relationship between employer and employee is something more than it is. And that, too, goes both ways.
There's plenty of value that people can and do bring to their roles without resorting to hoarding.
2xfo#altText
A social media post from a user "Harmony?"
Text:
I've spent over 30 years managing large government operations. One lesson I carry with me comes from the retirement years ago of an employee most would have considered "obscure." He was a quiet man arriving each morning with his sandwich, working steadily, and leaving without much fanfare. To many, he seemed part of the furniture. It was only when he left that we truly realized his value. Over the years, he had accumulated deep, almost invisible knowledge. He had taken on countless menial but essential tasks simply because he had the experience to do them well. He was, in many ways, the oil in the machine. His departure forced us to scramble. We suddenly saw how many small, critical pieces he had been holding together, pieces no job description had captured, and no system had tracked. Since then, I've often thought of him when I see organizations subjected to blind cuts. The true cost of such decisions is rarely visible on a balance sheet: it's in the loss of quiet expertise, institutional memory, and the small acts of continuity that keep complex systems running.
My first team lead was one of those people. Never claimed to be a good developer, but knew everyone and their dog in the company, knew the businesses of our clients and our clients' clients, and was good with people in a very positive way.
If shit hit the fan, he knew who to call, how to deescalate the situation and how to communicate with the affected parties.
Would love to still work with him, but corporate forced him to low ball my salary a bit too much.
Caz Mockett@GossiTheDog @Nickiquote my org (a UK university) is going through this right now. We are losing several key “backroom” people with YEARS of accumulated knowledge and I worry how we will fare when they are gone. Badly, I suspect. 😩
⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe@GossiTheDog these people are vital — but — why did he not document all these little processes he took on? that was part of his job, too.
I can't know, of course, but often the answer is, the place he worked for didn't allow for him to do that effectively.
@fishidwardrobe @GossiTheDog Resumes always seem to be about the big things people did to "increase revenue" or whatever, but don't mention all the little things someone knows and does that keep things moving for everyone else.
xs4me2Exactly this indeed…
SellaTheChemist@GossiTheDog Totally this!!
LisaBanana ⏚@GossiTheDog at this point it's almost a sabotage strategy
Dan, the world needs an enema!@GossiTheDog Now imagine #humanity as a whole: almost all of human knowledge, plus an increasing amount of AI slop, is stored in digital format (the oldest forms with the longest life, half a Century?) with the newest forms the shorter lifespan. An SSD without power can be expected to retain its data at the most a couple of years. The way it's going, it is more a matter of when, rather than if, we become extinct. A couple millenia and there won't be much left of our "Great" Civilization.
Benaresh@GossiTheDog I have a similar story: I was working in Print for a while and one guy never had his numbers met. Why? He cleaned the trays.
See those trays had socket-slots and if you damaged them with the chisel you use to clean them they get wiggle room. So that one guy cleaned all the trays for everybody because he was that good.
They fired him and i think within a week the tray for the 3010 sockets looked like an Axe Murderer got to them. Missprints went through the roof.
i_give_u_worms@GossiTheDog I think Caesar was surrounded by glue people at the end
@GossiTheDog It's one of the reason that offshoring / outsourcing jobs to dramatically underskilled + underpaid resources from poorer countries has caused so much havoc in IT circles over the years.
Bosses just thought the glue people could perform total KT (knowledge transfer) by writing everything down in multiple binders.
They never realized it's the WHY that matters about an operation / process / task at least 50% more than the WHAT.
(Hence my handle.) 😎
Karl Heinz Häsliprinz@GossiTheDog The only glue left will be on the pizzas.
Justin Derrick@GossiTheDog Yup, nearly a decade ago, I was working a new contract with a large bank. Two weeks in, they did a layoff, and two people from the department I was working in got canned.
One was the UNIX system admin with all the access I needed. The other was an analyst that knew all of the departments internal customers -- upstream providers of data, and downstream consumers of the data we were tasked with archiving.
Those two losses set back the project by a minimum of 6 months -- because every time we needed help, I didn't have someone to help me get access to the systems (by filling out requests and/or actually creating my account), and we never knew where certain data was coming from, and who it was supposed to go to (because the ONE person who knew was gone).
🐦🔥nemo™🐦⬛ 🇺🇦🍉@GossiTheDog It is called the linchpin effect. 💡 ✅ #linchpineffect
https://debliu.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-linchpins-and-why
Shirley Eugest@GossiTheDog
I've known many such people, in time I became a small piece of one. Nearly invisible... and management never learns.
I've known many such people, in time I became a small piece of one. Nearly invisible... and management never learns.
rozodru@GossiTheDog Many companies have already done this and many of them are now regretting it and scrambling to "fix" the slop that's been pushed to production.
within the past couple months or so I've been getting mails and messages from contacts on behalf of other clients about coming in to refactor or just straight up fix code, apps, etc that were pushed to production by AI Slop and "vibe coders". The tech debt is insane. It's gotten so bad I've been having to refer them to other devs who are looking for work.
I remember doing this a few years ago when companies were just offshoring to India but it was no where near as bad as it is now.
@GossiTheDog Sometimes I wonder about this. It's been true in my experience.
On the other hand, people were predicting that Twitter would completely stop working after Elon bought it and fired tons of staff. I remember hearing claims that there were no staff left who knew how to maintain (or were even aware of) critical systems responsible for serving tweets. That was almost three years ago, and while I only click a link to X every month or so, it still seems to work.
Nicole ParsonsIT has many a tale of Project Leads who grease the wheel of progress yet get fired after every "on time, on budget" success.
On paper, they aren't seen as "productive" (fewer code commits) but they keep teams on task without creating anger, smooth over interpersonal friction, and inject realistic time management.
No death marches. No kids in rehab. No divorces. No mental or health crises. Undramatic function.
Such people are seen as disposable even while creating big revenue.
@GossiTheDog and anyone who tries to propose that all of this be systematized to make all these people fungible... should be made to spend an entire week only allowed to walk by moving each individual muscle voluntarily
Yaoi Box Balloon@GossiTheDog Oh stop. You're giving me career ideas... 😈
Skarjune@GossiTheDog Same with Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) in the '90s. Workers laid off to pay for Re-engineering contracts. Later, managers notice more gaps in productivity, due to loss of Tacit knowledge that was held by lost staff. The contracts rarely paid off, and management imagines all kinds of excuses.
Until their failing company is acquired, absorbed, and liquidated. Too bad they didn't invest in the alternative Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and empower their own Teams.
The next hype will be GlueAI. It will figure out what all of your AI systems are doing, generate code to interface between the systems, and solve all problems.
Then GlueAI 2.0 will be released to fix the bugs.
It will be turtles all of the way down.
Mike McCaffrey@GossiTheDog @KateOfMind I'm all for companies learning that lesson, but am less excited about experiencing it from the federal government cuts.
Adrian Dymorz@GossiTheDog @fb Cold you please add the alt text to the image?
I would like to boost your post, but I only boost inclusive posts.
I would like to boost your post, but I only boost inclusive posts.