<story><title>One Way Smart Developers Make Bad Strategic Decisions</title><url>https://earthly.dev/blog/see-state/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jmull</author><text>Nice, interesting article.&lt;p&gt;But I would stress less that &amp;quot;Seeing Like a State&amp;quot; -- that is a top-down, global solution -- was not the problem.&lt;p&gt;The problem was that &amp;quot;Tim&amp;quot; didn&amp;#x27;t really understand the problem he was trying to solve (well, none of us truly understand very much at all, but he didn&amp;#x27;t understand it better than many of the teams associated with the individual services).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tim&amp;quot;&amp;#x27;s proposal probably solved some problems but created various other problems.&lt;p&gt;The best solution, though, (IMO) isn&amp;#x27;t that Tim should be smarted and better informed than everyone else combined, nor that every team should continue to create an independent solution. Instead &amp;quot;Tim&amp;quot; could propose a solution, and the 100 micro service teams would be tasked with responding constructively. Iterations would ensue. You still really, really need &amp;quot;Tim&amp;quot;, though, because multiple teams, even sincere and proficient ones, will not arrive at a coherent solution without leadership&amp;#x2F;direction.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A global solution, by necessity, has to ignore local conditions.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s just flat wrong. A global solution can solve global concerns and also allow for local conditions.</text></comment>
<story><title>One Way Smart Developers Make Bad Strategic Decisions</title><url>https://earthly.dev/blog/see-state/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>NateEag</author><text>For anyone interested in social systems that help avoid this top-down, centralized failure mode, I cannot recommend RFC 7282 enough:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;datatracker.ietf.org&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;rfc7282&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;datatracker.ietf.org&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;rfc7282&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;A whole lot of wisdom is captured in that document, including a deep understanding of the differences between unanimity, majority rule, and consensus.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re involved in standardization efforts in any way, whether it&amp;#x27;s deciding where your team will put braces in source code or running software architecture for a Fortune 100, it will well repay your reading time.</text></comment>