Despite the risk of sounding like an arrogant spoiled brat, I'll write this anyway. I have realized that moving from a developer role into management isn't just dancing on rose petals. And if you still try to participate in the development work, you experience brand new problems.
On one hand you feel like a member of the team. You participate in the work and you might even be good at it. And you know that it's value adding work. But due to your other duties you constantly feel that you are not doing enough. And you can't pair work as much you would like to, because it's rather time consuming. (Although I think the results are usually better than when working alone.)
On the other hand, you have your new management duties. In my case it means both being a supervisor and a Product Owner. A lot of coordination and simply communicating with other people are needed. I need to maintain the Product Backlog and sometimes even have unpleasant conversations.
I feel that upper management and the rest of the organization (and probably in the end even my team) would like me to concentrate on my managerial work. From systems point of view I understand it. The body benefits more if the lungs don't try to act like blood cells or brains as fingers. And I consciously try to do that. But it's a bit unnatural and I still feel like I'm pulled in two directions.
I'm not sure how common or rare this is, but I've perceived that I'm not the only one suffering from this problem. As a conclusion, I think the problem is mostly just between ears. When a person changes his/her role, it is more often that (s)he isn't able and/or willing to let go of the old duties. Unlearning is hard. But if you want to initiate change, you have to start from yourself.
I continue reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. There's so much food for thought that my reading is slow. But I'm learning a lot more about how our minds work.
Our intuition about statistics is terrible. And we tend to jump into conclusions after very small hints. Things that we have clear memories or that have an emotional factor are easily exaggerated. And availability and easiness of retrieval from memory also play a significant role.
After each plane crash people begin the question the safety of flying. Images of burning planes and lives lost come to our minds. They get a lot of media attention. This forms a vicious circle. Newspapers write about things that the crowd is interested in. And the more we read about these things the more we will get. But it doesn't change the fact that the probability of a plane crash is really small.
Our minds want to see patterns and purpose in our environment. We are not that eager or willing to pick our brain for real data and facts if there's a coherent story available. Linda problem is a classical example:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She
majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with
issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in
anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more probable?
Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
Majority of people select the second alternative. It fits to the mental image. But if you think about it, or create a Venn diagram, you will understand that the second alternative is a mere subset of the first alternative.
In many cases the form of the question and availability of examples you can (easily) think of also affect the result. Consider the following:
List three things that you'd like to change in your co-workers.
I was first going to ask about kids, but maybe this is easier. Well, it's not that hard to come up with three things. Boy, your colleagues must be really irritating. But let's try another one:
Give 15 examples of situations where your work environment didn't fill your needs.
Hopefully that wasn't as easy. First couple of things probably came easy but then you started to slow down (assuming you kept on after that). The outcome of this would be that things aren't really bad after all. The easier things come to our mind the more probable we think they are. And vice versa. This is in many cases rather confusing and even contradictory. People who are asked to find big list of positive things about some subject they like end up being less impressed about it. Even though they now actually know it has so many positive things!
Unfortunately I see the effects in software developers. (Same applies also to police.) When they are constantly dealing with only the negative sides (sw devs with bugs and police with crime), they get blind to the positive sides. What you see is all there is. Even if you have thousands of users and only a fraction experience problems. But if that's the only contact with the customers then it's really hard to resist the conclusion.
How much would you bet for each of these sets in an auction?
I tried to draw two sets of objects. One contains only nice, clean and unbroken things. The other one also has some flawed ones. If seen separately, people would probably put a lower price tag for the second set. Although it does contain all the elements from the first set plus a few extra. Logically thinking the second set is more valuable.
In software business one can easily get carried away with this. From developer point of you all you see are things that should be either fixed or improved. But you might also possess a huge asset that customers love. Otherwise you wouldn't probably even be employed.
Now fill in the missing blanc with the first word that comes to your mind:
_EAR
It's pretty safe bet to say your word was pear. So (hopefully) I fooled you! Situation would have been different if I would have selected snakes, tarantulas and other poisonous things and pasted this picture instead:
What happened to you is called priming. Human mind is really complex, but within the last decades we have learned to understand it better. Or at least we have better theories.
Brains have an awesome pattern recognition machinery. The artificial neural networks in Computer Science are trying to emulate how our brains work. They can be used to 'teach' the network to handle varying input. Our brains operate the same way. We have our own personal history. All our experiences, good and bad, actually affects how our brains work.
As a rude generalization I could say that brains are organized around ideas. Each idea contains a huge load of information about the topic and those idea boxes get more content while you gain more experience in life. Different ideas are connected. For example fruit - pear - green could be connected. Or if you have seen only yellow pears then your brain probably has different content. :)
In these vast networks there isn't only path across all ideas. And if you see some things more often together, they become more close for you. If you always get food after hearing a bell, your mind will probably link those two things.
Interestingly, your mind and body are maybe even more connected than you'd think. If you force your mouth into a smile or frown, it will statistically alter your mood. Similarly nodding or shaking your head will affect how you relate to a information you hear. Or if you see pictures of money, it will make you more independent, yet selfish. Probably not a good idea spread pictures of dollar bills around team room...
Two Systems
Your mind has actually two separate parts. There's the lazy, rational controller who thinks he's in charge and then the fast autopilot.
2 + 2 = ?
You didn't really calculate that. The answer just appeared in your mind. How about this:
16 x 27 = ?
You know you could answer that but it feels laborious and you don't want to do it. It would require some mental effort. Daniel Kahneman has labeled these two systems as System 1 (controller) and System 2 (autopilot).
System 2 is actually feeding us stories all the time about what's happening around us and System 1 is most of the time believing it. The difficult part is to understand when the story isn't true.
Cognitive easiness resembles truth. Saying that 'Repeating lie long enough makes it true' isn't far from being correct. And marketing people have known this for a long time. But things can't be to far out, they need to close enough to being true.
How many pairs of each animal did Moses take into the ark?
Well how about that? One pair? Or did you remember that Moses didn't even build ark, it was Noah. But don't feel bad even if you fell into this trap. Most people do. Moses is also an old guy in biblical context. Your brain was destined to fool you. But if I had replaced him with Skeletor your alarm bell would have probably worked better.
So sometimes we jump into conclusions without even being aware of it. Another noteworthy thing is that under strain the System 1 becomes almost blind. Check the experiment below. Stay sharp and concentrate on the white players:
While you concentrate of something mentally straining your pupils dilate. Also, you might need to stand still. (Have you ever been on the phone while walking and then you need to concentrate on getting the message through? At least I sometimes need to stop walking and think.)
All of this and much, much more you can read from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. If you are interested in how we (people) operate, I'd consider it a must read.
Side notes
As human brain extends and connects the ideas together, I'd like to also reflect how this information relates to what I've previously learned. Matthew D. Lieberman calls the two systems X-System and C-System. He actually has multiple references to Kahneman's work, so I guess it's good to read this one also.
David Rock (not personally) introduced me to the SCARF model. That already explains why we aren't so creative while being mentally strained. We can either fight or flight, but not innovate much.
Also this explains why I don't remember anything about conversations that I have while watching tv. And even more when I watch a movie that has subtitles. That's my brain saying "please return to the topic after the movie."
