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@ vp
2024-12-07 14:50:29Yesterday was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and as someone who has lived experience with disabilities, I feel compelled to broaden our discussion of limits and scalability. Today, we’re not just going to talk about technical boundaries; we’re going to talk about the boundaries that come with being human — the physical, psychological, and cognitive limits that impact the scalability of both our systems and our lives.
Scalability of Software
When we talk about scalability in software, we often think about adding more servers, expanding databases, and creating solutions to handle millions of requests per second. It’s easy to visualize what happens when our infrastructure reaches its physical limits. We know a single instance or database won’t suffice, and scaling horizontally, through containers or distributed systems, becomes necessary. The aim is to prevent revenue loss and inefficiencies in our systems, so we have dedicated interviews and tests to evaluate our designs for scalability.
But we use an entire universe of solutions — clusters, microservices, caching layers — to maintain a software system's seamless operation. We understand the constraints of our technologies: the speed of a CPU, the limits of network bandwidth, and even the eventual consistency of distributed databases. Yet, for some reason, we don’t apply the same rigor when considering the scalability of human beings.
Physical and Mental Limits
People, just like servers, have their own limits. The difference is that, unlike servers, humans can’t simply receive a RAM upgrade or a CPU boost. People — whether neurotypical or living with disabilities — all have physical, mental, and emotional capacities that define how well they perform. These limits vary widely based on an individual’s current mental state, life circumstances, and overall health. We easily recognize the bottlenecks in our software systems, but we often ignore the limits of our teams, pretending that they are limitless resources. This ignorance can be particularly damaging when we expect people to scale without recognizing their very human boundaries.
The Challenge of Human Scale
Scaling organizations or teams isn’t as straightforward as scaling software systems. A server under heavy load will throw an error or crash; people under heavy load often don’t give such immediate feedback. They push through — flexible, determined, but often at a cost. They stretch themselves to the breaking point, resulting in burnout and inefficiency. Burnout is not like a system error you can trace; it’s an invisible burden that gradually renders people ineffective, to the point where they might cause more harm than benefit, both to themselves and to the organization.
The pandemic underscored just how critical these challenges are, as many of us faced overwhelming workloads, blurred work-life boundaries, and mounting stress. These aren’t just individual problems; they’re organizational problems that reflect a poor understanding of the limits of human scalability.
Humans Are Not Easily Replaceable
Unlike software components, you can’t simply swap out a human team member as easily as replacing a failing server. Even if we could make people “replaceable” in a superficial sense — by having robust onboarding processes or extensive documentation — it still takes time for someone new to develop the context, the nuanced understanding of systems, and the tacit knowledge that an experienced member holds. To create truly scalable organizations, we must recognize that our people are the most fragile and valuable parts of our system, and we must build processes that respect and protect their limits.
What Kills Productivity of Individuals
Many things hinder individual productivity: cognitive overload, unrealistic deadlines, unclear communication, and mismatched tasks. Stress, far from making people better performers, often leads to worse decision-making and a diminished ability to think creatively. A person cannot indefinitely maintain high productivity if they are not mentally well — no matter how driven or talented they are. This is why effective scaling means reducing cognitive load, supporting mental well-being, and ensuring people are placed in roles that suit their skills and capacities.
Feedback and Errors in a System
A software system will crash and return an error when something goes wrong — but people don’t function this way. Humans have an incredible capacity for resilience, but this means they often keep going well past their limits. They won’t always provide the “error message” you need; they’ll keep trying until they’re mentally and physically drained. Unlike machines, they’re capable of sustaining damage without immediately signaling it. This flexibility, while admirable, is also dangerous because it obscures problems that should be addressed immediately.
What Kills Teams and Communication
Ineffective communication is one of the biggest killers of teams. Lack of transparency — or even worse, pseudo-transparency — creates a culture where team members feel isolated and uninformed. Miscommunications can pile up, just like technical debt, eventually causing the collapse of a project. Teams that operate with open communication, where feedback is genuinely heard and acted upon, are far more scalable than those that don’t.
Another challenge is the misunderstanding of skills and responsibilities. Placing a highly skilled person in a junior role or expecting a junior person to perform like an industry leader both lead to inefficiency and frustration. The “right person, right role” philosophy is critical for creating an effective team, just like choosing the right data structure or algorithm is vital for software performance.
Right People in the Right Place
To truly scale, we must remove the factors that destroy human productivity — cognitive overload, stress, lack of communication, and poorly assigned roles. Conway’s Law tells us that the systems we design mirror the communication structures of our organizations. If we want resilient, scalable systems, we must first create resilient, scalable teams. This means putting the right people in the right positions, making sure they are not overburdened, and providing them with the processes they need to succeed.
This shouldn’t be an empty slogan or a feel-good statement for HR brochures. It should be the underlying principle that guides our design choices — not just for software systems, but for our human systems as well.