[aero142]

Exactly. Good products and companies are abstractions that allow a homeowner to not have to learn about shingles. The roofer should definitely understand what shingles are going to provide rain and show protection in the customer's environment. The roofer doesn't have to know everything about the chemistry and material that is in the shingle though. That abstraction is provided by the shingle manufacturer. They need an expert that knows about adhesives and gravel and how many years of sun exposure they can handle.

I think this article is bad because it empowers a lot of people to dismiss expertise as unimportant rather than knowing where that expert is. I think the important thing for companies is to have clear understanding of what abstraction your product provides your customers, and which portion of creating that product are you the expert in. You should then delegate the portions that you don't want to be the expert in, and make sure you hire and retain the experts that DO know about that. "The most important thing is understanding the customer." is bad advice on its own. "The customer wants a flying car." Well, do you have an expert in making cars fly? If not then understanding the customer isn't that valuable.

[tensor]

Did you read the same article I did? It explicitly said expertise is more important than technology choice. From the article:

"Think about it this way. If you were trying to solve any problem with software, which would you choose?

A unmotivated, unskilled team with the best technology

A motivated, skilled team with the worst technology"

This is saying that skilled people with worse tools will still create a better product then people with the best tools but no skills. In the roofing analogy it would be someone who uses the best shingles and hammers and other tools, but screws up the installation and the roof leaks anyways, vs someone with less good shingles but installs things so well that its still a good roof.

I think this lesson is extremely relevant in technology. For example, there are some developers who are more interested in the technology choice than solving the user problem well, and the result is a long development time with subpar user experience. On the other hand I've used excellent services, stable, fast, good UI, built with tech that I'd never personally choose. I can only imagine that those teams have great developers despite having to work with tech that isn't as good.

[PeterisP]

But that's not the tradeoff presented in the title "Understanding People Matters More Than Understanding Tech".

"Understanding tech" is not about choosing a tool or choosing a tech stack or picking a vendor (coincidentally, doing the latter right would be correlated with "understanding people"), "understanding tech" is about being able to build and/or configure that tech properly. In the roofing analogy, someone who uses the best shingles and hammers and other tools, but screws up the installation and the roof leaks anyways is someone who clearly doesn't understand the roofing tech (i.e. how to build roofs and 'install and configure' shingles) and we have no information about whether they do or don't understand people.

If you put the choice to that, then it's not about the quoted irrelevant choice but something entirely else - a mangling like "an unmotivated skilled team vs motivated unskilled team" isn't exact but at least somewhat relevant to the point the original post attempt to discuss; perhaps, to be generous, "a well-coordinated team of unskilled roofers with great communication and clear goals" vs "a bunch of skilled roofers each individually doing the thing they think is best without asking the customer" or something like that.

[tensor]

I don't actually care much about the title. You are very welcome to criticize it if you want, but what you are reading into the title is not what the article itself said, and the poster I replied to specifically cited the article not the title.

TLDR: we don't need to guess the authors intent behind the title, you can just read the article.

[abc_lisper]

But others do. There are managers who think exactly this - people are replaceable cogs - meaning you can treat them like that too - as tools that are like store bought

TLDR: See Boeing

[aero142]

I'm a bit late responding, but I'll answer anyway. I did read the article and believe I am disagreeing with the author's core point.

In the roofing example, the roof installer is passionate about roofing shingles, but the home owner doesn't have to care about it because he found a roofer who does care. If the roofer is good with people and passionate, but doesn't know the difference between types of shingles, you aren't going to get a good roof. In this case, understanding people is NOT more important that understanding shingles. The expertise of the roofer is what allows the homeowner to not have to care about shingle. But the expert roofer is the rare item. Every random person on the street wants to not have to care, but the expert roofer is rare. I bet business is booming.

For the team example, it's a straw-man that I don't want to conceded to the author. Sure, in some imaginary land, there is a motivated and skilled team that is force to use terrible technology but somehow overcomes this. This is not a useful description. In my experience, skilled teams are experts at choosing and understanding their tools to make technology. For skilled craftspeople, working with others is important and required, but so is being a skilled expert. The expert part is usually more rare than the people part.

The problem I have with the author is that they have picked two poor examples to support a misleading title. In my experience, companies are fully of people who say they understand people, but there is a skilled group with their doors closed making thing work. One day those people leave, and the people running around saying people are more important than technology are suddenly confused why things stopped getting done.