The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)

Oh snap that was some good "the expert" energy. ▶ this video Why cant we have parallel lines that intersect. Geometry.

If it can pass it when you ask it in a way only a coder can write, then we will still need coders. If you need to tweak your prompt until you get the correct result, then we still need coders who can tell that the code is wrong. Ask Product Managers to use ChatGPT instead of coders and they will ask for 7 red lines all perpendicular to each other with one being green. ▶ this video

Always a good time to rewatch the expert: ▶ this video > most people are okay at describing their problems, but suck at proposing solutions Yes, it's best to focus on their problems and the consequences of proposed solutions. They shouldn't care about your caching strategy internals but they do care about whether stale info impacts their users or what scale it's reasonable to hit, or how much extra it'll cost to implement.

The third 'no' is really well shown in ▶ this video . (A video about an expert being asked to do the impossible by people who have no idea what they are asked.)

It's basically this: ▶ this video Once all your meetings turn to this you have to leave, or lobotomize yourself

> Often the business requirements are non-sensical, contradicting, or pointless. Someone has to actually figure out what they mean without pissing off steakholders. That reminded me very much of this skit "The Expert". ▶ this video

We've been hearing that for years. And yet here we are. When an AI can understand and implement the customer's "parallel red lines some of which are perpendicular and some of them are green"[1], only then we're doomed. Until then, we're secure. [1] ▶ this video

Any analysis of a problem, requires understanding WHAT problem needs solving. The issue in real world is, buisnesses and markets (as well as technology) are changing very fast, and any in-depth analysis done two years ago might not have the same outcome as if done today again. This is a fundamental realization of agile. If you have a problem domain which is not subject to change, waterfall might be the right choice. But you almost never have that. I know it is hard to accept for us devs, often with backgrounds in Math/Physics/CS etc. because the problems we were trained to tackle there are always the same, and the laws of math and physics tend to never change (or change way slower than in modern markets). Relevant clip perfectly highlighting the problems you have during requirement analysis: ▶ this video

But blindly following a "let's make it work" approach just leads to this: ▶ this video An expert "That Can't Work" early saves a lot of time.

I hate this so much. But it's so common. I was told not to mention the caveats, instead, render a confident image for the team many times in my career. It's like doctors suggest their patients to use some drugs without mentioning any side effects. It reminds me of the video[0] which asks the developer to draw red lines with blue ink, while the project manager keeps pushing the developer like "You're the expert, of course you can do draw red lines with blue ink!". [0] ▶ this video

> somebody said that a thing is simply not possible and a manager asked "but what if it was possible?" I've been an Individual Contributor, and a Manager, and am back to being an IC. I've been on both sides of this conversation. One of the benefits of being a manager is being able to see the forest from the trees while your team members may be so focused on their tasks they do not see the big picture. Sure, sometimes the answer to "but what if it was possible?" if just "it's not." But a lot of times, the good managers I've had would propose an approach to MAKING it possible that I just simply didn't see. And I've been able to do the same in their shoes. Sometimes it requires a paradigm shift - Q: "How do we get to the other town faster?" A: "The horses are running as fast as they can" Q: "What if we found a faster horse?" (e.g. a car) But honestly in day to day office culture it rarely needs to be so revolutionary - Q: "Could we finish the project faster if Bill's team helped us?" A: "No, it's not possible. Bill's team said they are completely swamped" <Goes off to do some managerial work> Q: "Okay, I've chatted to Bill, and his team is fully available to help us finish the project." I'll leave you with this "Expert" saying that something is simply not possible: ▶ this video And an actual expert showing how it can be done: link

9) The expert barely tolerates when the title 'expert' is used by everybody else to merely justify their lack of knowledge in a given area. "I don't know nothing about databases, but X/Y can solve it because he/she is the software expert". "I heard you are the expert in firmware, can you fix the coffee machine?" More or less like the fact one cannot play like Mozart just because Mozart was a 'genius' (putting aside all the effort he put into it since childhood), the same applies to the 'expert'. Edit: "The expert" ▶ this video