Software Drives People Insane
20 days ago
- Software combines speed, money, complexity, abstraction, and freedom to change, which can make otherwise normal people lose their sense of proportion.
- Most software is essentially a glorified spreadsheet, but the process of building it can turn people into b-tier Bond villains obsessed with speed, urgency, and ever-changing plans.
- In software, there is little natural friction between an idea and its implementation, so changes appear cheap even when hidden costs like context switching, regression risk, and architectural erosion accumulate.
- Because software can always be improved, there is no natural definition of 'done'—the button could be better, the query faster, the product broader—so organizations become neurotic surrounded by endless levers.
- Money amplifies the madness: a small team can plausibly build something worth hundreds of millions, turning mundane decisions into emotionally charged bets on the company's future.
- Complexity offers psychological rewards—status, importance, and work—so systems often exist partly to support the organization that exists partly to support the system.
- Software gives a feeling of control, leading people to treat the company itself like software: permanently mutable, permanently unfinished, and always one refactor away from working properly.
- Leaving things alone is an underrated skill; not every database, process, onboarding flow, or product needs to be changed or redesigned.
- Patience is hostile to software culture, but the real answer is proportion: understanding that not every problem is existential, not every idea belongs on the roadmap, and not every piece of software needs to become a platform.
- Most software is just a tool to make life easier—building useful things should be enough, without constantly tinkering with things that don't need tinkering.