Individuals matter

The title here is the punchline, and it is a strong reminder for managers that fundamentally individuals matter. This is particularly true in technology. Humans are not a fungible resource, and some technologists are better at solving problems of one type versus another. I've known several amazing technologists that were brilliant and creative yet could never finish a project, even though they could build the first 80% faster than anyone else.

Some people seem to view companies like a game of SimCity, where if you want more money, you can turn a knob, increase taxes, and get more money, uniformly impacting the city. But companies are not a game of SimCity. If you want more attrition and turn a knob that cranks that up, you don't get additional attrition that's sampled uniformly at random. People, as a whole, cannot be treated as an abstraction where the actions company leadership takes impacts everyone in the same way. The people who are most effective will be disproportionately likely to leave if you turn a knob that leads to increased attrition.

Early in my career I used to correct people anytime they used generic terms like "we have 5 FTE's working on this." That labeling and thinking suggests that any person is just like another, and they are not. I don't do that anymore, and at scale you don't know all the individuals personally, but it is critical that managers in technology build that connection and individualized understanding of each person on their team.