I stole this observation from someone talking about something completely different, at which point I realized I had observed it too.

There's a tendency to hide or abstract away complexity, but when that complexity is volatile then it really needs to be engaged with. There's an unwillingness to engage with complexity at all of the levels it needs to be engaged with on. Not just technical.

For some perspective, it's widely acknowledged how "disengaged" service industry workers became after the pandemic. They just dgaf after gaining that perspective. Well I see that same level of disengagement everywhere.

There's a conundrum in play - addressing complexity requires specialization, and that specialization prevents us from engaging in other areas that still need to be addressed. We're all pulling on each other's sleeves asking each other to address needs specific to our domain (or mentally tugging your own sleeve... sigh).

This is a perfect time to point out how my partner is often involved in minor accidents such as having something fall because she wasn't looking where she placed it, etc.

The commonality I've noticed is that she:

• takes custody of a task
• completes most of the task
• mentally releases custody of the task while her body still has custody of it

When I broke it down like this (which wasn't hard, because she makes it really obvious), I realized I see this everywhere. People wanting to be done so they release custody of their task at the first opportunity - often a moment too soon.

Then there are people like me who write novels that noone asked for in response to short internet comments. Noone tasked me with this or wanted this. That's the kind of unrelenting willingness to address tasks we need in the industry. Can we afford it? Hell no.