Bureaucrats are people who exercise power from behind their desk. That is the literal meaning of the word. Software companies are the most influential bureaucracies of our day by this definition. Because every decision you delegate to a computer program ends up on the desk of the programmer who writes it.
Most tech companies don't present themselves that way. People in the sector like to see themselves as entrepreneurs and innovators, the very opposite of the faceless bureaucrats who try to constrain people with red tape. I don't know if this is earnest self-delusion or manipulative self-promotion. Either way it's not true. If Elon Musk can play the role of David, then what does Goliath look like?
If you're looking for a tech executive who will give you a more honest perspective on the sector, you should look no further than Joel Spolsky. “Developers are writing the script for the future,” he titled a talk some years ago. His message is aimed at programmers, and some of his observations must seem very bleak for non-technical people. At one point he describes how Amazon uses its warehouse workers as “output devices” in a highly optimized software system. I do think he cringes when he says it though, so there's that. Either way it's worth bearing with him, because at the end he talks about how developers should handle their growing power:
“Everything we do in the world is mediated through software. It's simple things like an alarm clock or hailing a taxi [...], and that's not a big deal. But when presidential elections are happening through software that is a big deal. Those decisions that developers are making through the software are incredibly important. And it is incredibly important that we consider who those developers are [...] and that we think of them as the philosopher-poets of this day and age.”
This reminds me of the ethics espoused by Confucian bureaucrats throughout China's imperial history. His mention of philosopher-poets in particular is what triggered the association for me. Because for centuries poetry and philosophy were the mainstay of the Chinese civil service exams. This detail aside, he does seem to argue in general that software developers should strive to be a benevolent, cultured elite. This is a quintessentially Confucian way of thinking.
To properly evaluate this idea, we should keep two things in mind. One: however enlightened it may sound, Confucianism is still in essence an authoritarian ideology. If you believe at all in democracy, this is just not good enough. Two: Spolsky represents the nice face of Big Tech. I don't think Jeff Bezos wants his underlings to emulate Confucian scholar-officials. Rather, most software tycoons are instructing their bureaucrats to behave like Roman tax farmers. So let's consider very carefully which things we want to render unto Caesar.
This post was originally published on HEY World.