A while ago when chatting with bros about an image posted on S1,
hulucc sighed: “Honestly this author bears at least half the blame.”
eagzzycsl added: “Like the one-centimeter principle, developers have the duty to ensure final integrity.”
One-Centimeter Sovereignty
There’s a story passed down for a long time
about Germany during the Berlin Wall era.
A soldier shot dead a young man trying to escape over the wall.
He was sued in court.
Although he and his lawyer argued “this was just following orders,”
the judge pointed out:
“You did have to carry out orders, but you could have aimed off.”
In the end, the soldier was sentenced.
Though this story sounds like chicken soup,
and some people doubt its veracity,
the principle in the story is real:
conscience is a universal human principle,
ethical bottom lines can’t be lowered just because there’s an excuse.
This story always reminds me of a passage in 《Mencius》,
where King Hui of Liang felt he had governed wholeheartedly,
having done all he could.
But Mencius directly pointed out a series of problems in that society,
and made a deafening metaphor:
When dogs and pigs eat the food of men and you don’t notice;
when there are corpses of the starving on the road and you don’t relieve them;
when people die, you say: “It’s not me, it’s the year.”How is this different from stabbing a person to death, then saying: “It’s not me, it’s the weapon!”
King Hui of Liang, in his governance,
could always compromise nicely with his own excuses,
but the world was drifting further from his expectations.
In life many times we can muddle through by relying on excuses,
but at the final results moment,
it still depends on what we specifically did.
This is what I call:
think idealistically,
but live materialistically.
Technology as Service Industry
One-centimeter sovereignty seems like a faraway story.
Let me tell another memory I’ve kept for a while.
In college I worked at the school’s network management department,
where every week I had to be on duty for repair requests.
The most memorable was
a student who came to make noise for half an hour because he didn’t get to enroll in a class.
True, what does not getting into a class have to do with us network management students who fix network ports?
But from his perspective,
beyond venting his emotions,
the hard-to-use enrollment system and crappy network
probably also needed solving.
Doing tech is like this.
I’ve seen plenty of people in collaboration
solve their problem with the principle “I don’t care about this.”
And when this kind of person multiplies,
naturally a football-field feeling forms.
If every day you’re chasing the un-solveable football-like problems,
your enthusiasm will quickly burn out.
In tech work,
within the defined work scope,
there are these gray-area, service-leaning matters
that need to be completed.
I’m Not Wrong
In the one-centimeter sovereignty story,
there’s also a hidden belief
called “I’m not wrong.”
Like the dev in the top image,
honestly, he can think he’s not wrong.
But if it were me,
I wouldn’t act this way.
Tech work, because of its professionalism,
makes it hard for outsiders to question what we say.
For example if I tell product:
“This feature’s historical implementation logic is just like this,”
he can hardly verify what I said by reading the code himself.
But if I were a chef and said: “This dish is just made this way,”
clearly there’s room for questioning.
In tech work,
as the work scope solidifies,
the excuses each person gets multiply.
But precisely in such times
is when one-centimeter sovereignty kind of qualities like
humility and self-reflection show their value.
So no matter when, remember:
human boundaries aren’t fixed,
I always possess one more centimeter of power.
(In the tone of the Winter Swim Uncle)
(End)