Singularities, love and experts? What do you mean Eli? What are you talking about? How are they connected?
Let me explain. It all starts with books!
This year, I decided to read (among others) the following two books:
Also, I had a great talk (over a couple of glasses of Merlot) with a great Software Architect and Engineering Manager that I had the fortune of meeting this year.
This two (three?) events got me thinking about these 3 subjects.
Let’s start with singularities. According to American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, Kip Thorne, a singularity could be described as:
A point where the laws of physics break down and measurements of gravity go to infinity.
To me, a singularity is:
A point in space and time that cannot be explained by science or by any logical way.
A singularity simply happens, it simply exists.
There are many singularities that happen during our life and that we cannot explain logically. Sometimes, we do not stop to admire them, to think about them. To reflect and realize how lucky we are.
One of these singularities (at least to me) is love . There may be some logical romantics out there and some biological explanations to love (e.g. what happens at a physical, biological level when we fall in love) but to me, it is still magical. Finding the person that you have looked around in many places and maybe for some years. To find him / her at the least expected moment (maybe when you had lost all hope), when you were not looking and at the least expected place in the planet, let alone the planet, in the Universe! Singularity.
How do experts relate to singularities? Well, according to the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning:
Statistically, there are not very many experts - probably something on the order of 1 to 5 percent of the population.
In the context of the Software Industry, let’s think for a moment: How many companies are there? How many Software Engineers are working for these companies? How many of them are really experts at their craft? Yes, not many of them. Statistically 1 to 5 percent! What is the probability to have one of them in our team? Not very high.
I think that only a singularity would make this possible. There might be a single point in space and time where we have the amazing opportunity to have an expert in our team! I got to tell you, it happened to me, and as it happened, I did not know, at the moment, how incredibly lucky I was to be working not only with one but a few of them.
I feel that amazing teams are built this way as well, by singularities. I don’t think there is a recipe , a list of steps to follow, to reproduce. Although, there are great talks, books, blog posts about how to build great, effective and high performing teams, I think a lot of it has to do with the people that make the team and the moment at which they are in their lives. To me, it is that combination of people and moment that create and make Golden Eras in teams and organizations. They belong to a singular point of space and time .
There you go! I hope with all my heart that this makes sense to you as well! :D
Thank you to all the special people that have created and made possible the singularities in my life .
I wish you an amazing New Year! May this new year and your life be full of singularities .
