blog: The Meta is More Appealing

src/content/blog/2023-02-13-the-exceptions-are-more-interesting.md

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 author: Thomas Wilson
 
 ---
+
+Edit: Ironically, this post is a little too generic.  My thinking got a bit clearer in [The Meta is More Appealing](/blog/2023-02-19-the-meta-is-more-appealing/).  Thomas 2023-02-19.
+
+---
+
 I'm going to open with three buzzwords and a bland sentiment:
 
 Theories, policies, and frameworks are useful.  

src/content/blog/2023-02-19-the-meta-is-more-appealing.md

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+---
+title: The Meta is More Appealing
+date: 2023-02-19T19:33:01.450Z
+slug: 2023-02-19-the-meta-is-more-appealing
+author: Thomas Wilson
+
+---
+Earlier this week I wrote a piece, [The exceptions are more interesting](/blog/2023-02-13-the-exceptions-are-more-interesting).  Tl;dr - unless you're extremely careful at work,  ideas/advice/theories become platitudes, and therefore less useful.
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+My brain isn't finished with the idea, I think the point I want to make is: 
+
+> It is tempting to prefer talking in generalisations.  It feels more useful, because you can think-once-run-anywhere.  It's easy to dismiss a criticism of an "in general" with the details of "just one" specific.  But for any one given problem or situation, it's probably more useful to give specific advice - and *then* try to make it general.
+
+We've got a couple of new-ish projects going on at work.  They   are taking a lot of my time.  Because they're new, there's a lot of ground-work to do as a software engineer.  You've got to understand the way the current system works, how we want the future system to work, and where we can/not take shortcuts to get things done quicker.
+
+This means that a lot of the conversations at the moment have to be *really* specific.  For example you might have to say "If you had to wait six weeks for two of these features, what's most acceptable" or "can we do a manual conversion of data here, instead of spending a week automating it?".  
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+I think some people see this level of specificity as a bad thing.
+
+There's an idea that generalisations or meta-level work is always more useful than talking about the specifics of an issue.  Taking the examples above, they might respond "we need a rigorous, opportunity-cost approach to prioritising" or "we need a clean set of code tools for data input automation".
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+Sometimes I'll try to bring conversations closer to the specifics and detail of a specific problem, and the response is to try to find generalities, or meta-conversations.
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+Those things feel and sound useful, but they take every problem one step above where it is.  Sometimes you really do just have to *do the thing*™️.  
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+There's a middle ground between the engineer who has to spend days-weeks in the weeds, and the product-person who spends time thinking about processes.  But I think that meta conversations and grand theories-of-everythings can take the air out of the room for conversations of specific problems.

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