Remote Work Woes

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Just got an update from the service operation team where I work. WebEx has become unusable due to load. It’s a global problem. Hopefully, Cisco can add capacity to meet demand.

I am concerned with how much the outsourced services like Zoom, WebEx, Teams, can handle the demand. The services are being stress-tested this week.

According to POTUS and others, this is our life for the next five months.

Beware of dependencies

Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours (alexdanco.com)

"The other day, I came across a website I’d written over two decades ago. I double-clicked the file, and it opened and ran perfectly. Then I tried to run a website I’d written 18 months ago and found I couldn’t run it without firing up a web server, and when I ran NPM install, one or two of those 65,000 files had issues that meant node failed to install them and the website didn’t run. When I did get it working, it needed a database. And then it relied on some third-party APIs and there was an issue with CORS because I hadn’t whitelisted localhost.

My website made of files carried on, chugging along. This isn’t me saying that things were better in the old days. I’m just saying that years ago, websites were made of files; now, they are made of dependencies."

The last line really hit a chord with me: that’s exactly it. Worlds of scarcity are made out of things. Worlds of abundance are made out of dependencies. That’s the software playbook: find a system made of costly, redundant objects; and rearrange it into a fast, frictionless system made of logical dependencies. The delta in performance is irresistible, and dependencies are a compelling building block: they seem like just a piece of logic, with no cost and no friction. But they absolutely have a cost: the cost is complexity, outsourced agency, and brittleness. The cost of ownership is up front and visible; the cost of access is back-dated and hidden.

Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours

Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours (alexdanco.com)

"The other day, I came across a website I’d written over two decades ago. I double-clicked the file, and it opened and ran perfectly. Then I tried to run a website I’d written 18 months ago and found I couldn’t run it without firing up a web server, and when I ran NPM install, one or two of those 65,000 files had issues that meant node failed to install them and the website didn’t run. When I did get it working, it needed a database. And then it relied on some third-party APIs and there was an issue with CORS because I hadn’t whitelisted localhost.

My website made of files carried on, chugging along. This isn’t me saying that things were better in the old days. I’m just saying that years ago, websites were made of files; now, they are made of dependencies."

The last line really hit a chord with me: that’s exactly it. Worlds of scarcity are made out of things. Worlds of abundance are made out of dependencies. That’s the software playbook: find a system made of costly, redundant objects; and rearrange it into a fast, frictionless system made of logical dependencies. The delta in performance is irresistible, and dependencies are a compelling building block: they seem like just a piece of logic, with no cost and no friction. But they absolutely have a cost: the cost is complexity, outsourced agency, and brittleness. The cost of ownership is up front and visible; the cost of access is back-dated and hidden.