Comment by eager_learner
6 days ago
to--> latexr: Thank you for the link to Polum's essay in juliusosis. It really is the case that a lot of incompetence is hiding in plain sight. Probably because modern schooling encourages this.
I've lived in China (as a foreigner) and they have a word for Juliuses. They call them the 'cha bu duo xiansheng' = the 'Mr. Almost ok'.
> It really is the case that a lot of incompetence is hiding in plain sight.
It may sound preposterous but I'm going to make the argument that sometimes not knowing how things work is a feature, not a bug.
I would assume most people with a little work-experience has encountered the kind of legacy systems which is crucial to the business, yet for whatever reason doing any sort of work on them involves a tremendous amount of friction.
A technical person who knows how this system works in and out will often claim that certain seemingly simple things cannot be done, because of how the system works.
It might be highly impractical, but if we're honest about things, it's all software. It can be changed if we decide to and the company is willing to put in the effort to make it happen. It's clearly possible, but the skilled worked will often present it as an impossibility.
The Julius, not hampered by such knowledge or constraints, will be see a seemingly simple problem, and maybe even imagine what other things would be possible or even "simple" if that problem was solved.
If the Julius manages to get management approval for these ideas, you may actually end up getting management approval for changing/upgrading the base system causing the friction, something the more fact-based engineers would not.
Chances are it's going to be messier than projected, not being delivered on time... But in the long term it might be a net good for everyone involved ;)
> I'm going to make the argument that sometimes not knowing how things work is a feature, not a bug.
You will probably be interested in the concept of Shoshin, or Beginner’s Mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind
But that does not describe a Julius. Julius is not someone with an open mind unconstrained by technical debt, but someone who fakes an aura of knowledge while actually understanding very little.
There is a chasm of difference between an eager beginner who questions the way things work and how to make them simpler and someone who promises things which are impossible. Julius is the latter.