Change is a thing that's inevitable in all our lives and we often just have to suck it up whether it's to do with looking disappointedly in the mirror as we age¹, the rapid inherent dilapidation of our unaffordable motor vehicles, or primarily with the things that matter the most — the technology that we progressive engineers depend on the Grand Game use every day.

I wouldn't like vim to change at all, that would be a form of technological heresy, nor would I like awk, grep, or sed to suddenly have their command line options change or their output me reformatted overnight either. Those events would be extremely irritating, borderline panic inducing, and break much of the code I've written during my accidental tenure in the Grand Game of Software Engineering².

It's actually one of the reasons I refuse to use the ever changing VSC with its bells, whistles, add-ons, and inconsistencies. Sometimes you don't really quite what's going to happen when you give in to the relentless nagging to update some add-on or other, quite often one that you never knew you had in the first place.

Alas, things do change and it can be intensely irritating when do — most especially if they don't have a really good reason to do so.

People are pretty much the same, they change slowly over time so much that you hardly notice it if you spend time regularly with them. As a stereotypical software engineer, of course, I see actual people rarely and what people I do see tend to be the same ones. So, when they suddenly begin either looking or acting markedly differently my spider sense starts tingling and I start to wonder what the hell's going on.

Consider the humble workplace³ where us progressive developers are forced to mingle with the hoards of management automatons, the legions of HR droids, and minions that belong to the various other departmental incarnations of varying amounts of disaster that make up the modern corporate dystopia.

Developers change little on the whole. Perhaps a little more (or less) facial hair depending on mood, choice of music, or day of the week it is, an experimental hair cut or colour, or even a piercing if they're particularly progressive.

They may dress a little differently depending on whether it's been wash day recently, have spilled coffee over themselves in excitement over a new iOS Memoji, or just have an interview and have to temporarily conform to someone else's idea of being smart and presentable⁴.

Gadgets come and go, iPhones evolve, Apple Watches change size and their bands regularly swap in and out, and even the standard messenger back or backpack can alter form depending on time of year, size of bonus check, or the decision to throw it all in and live in a hut in the woods.

Unfortunately, I can't really say the same for the other inhabitants of the aforementioned dystopia.

Although management, for example, dresses according to perceived rank (suit, business casual, chinos, bin bag) their various accoutrements switch regularly as often as the wind changes directly.

Whether it's a free package of after shave or perfume from an airport magazine, a designer hand bag, briefcase, or satchel, or just the colour of their tie or shoes you can depend on the fact that the predictability of their appearance is never certain.

Those on recent company "think-ins" or "retreats" suddenly acquire new and rather plush towels when spotted in the company sponsored gym, for example, rather than the same old threadbare sentimental ones from childhood us developers keep for such distressing occasions.

Managerial umbrellas oscillate to reflect their latest client meetings rather than the unchanging alcoholic branded and bent ones sported by developers, even the free pens that they perceive as some kind of trophy prize regularly swap places on pocket parade, the discarded ones littered around like some kind of crumb trail of cheap plastic detritus that they really are.

The ties match the socks, the shoes match the belts, the earrings match the bracelets… The constant rearranging and co-ordination is enough to make the standard autumn⁵ shaded developer pull over their nondescript hoodie right over their head in fright!

But, enough about the physical bells and whistles of the workplace, let's get on to the things that really matter.

The developer personality is forged like a trusty DnD sword in the flames of their beginning where the Linux brigade are the threadbare trusty backpack black t-shirted beardy ones, the macOS fraternity are the sleek over the shoulder padded messenger bag carriers with carefully manicured hair and a disdain for anything not space gray, and the unfortunate Windows minority, well we don't talk about them. RIP.

Their likings are well defined and set solidly in stone, spaces over tabs, indented braces over end of line Egyptian ones, and camelCase over anything else. They just don't change.

Management, however, are in a constant state of flux and take their own lead from the ever changing words in the latest dire airport business tomes, what their next "line manager" up the food chain said over lunch, and the usual drivel spouted by the "though leaders" on LinkedIn⁶.

In fact, left to their own devices in a corner cubicle or forgotten conference room, it's very likely that a project manager will be unrecognisable after a few short hours if they're left alone with an open laptop with access to LinkedIn, Stack Exchange's Workplace, or Udemy.

Workplace courses, well, online courses these days, have a similar effect.

With developers (if they have to endure such abject humiliation) brushing off the simplistic nonsense therein as already known or irrelevant and only watching the tripe to box tick their SMART goals, management often take completely to heart the instructions and directives in the poorly put together online shorts.

One day a manager is struggling to intervene in a developer verbal punch up over comments in a git repo containing ^M, the next they're an immediate expert in conflict resolution, their whole vocabulary having changed overnight, their body language taking on a newfound elegance, and although still fundamentally ineffective due to a crushing lack of gravitas they do seem like a completely different droid altogether.

The next they're a great leader at the whiteboard, power posing in front of the myriad of tiny bits of coloured paper all fluttering in the wind, being careful not to point with a single finger, and definitely saying "let's take this offline" when any discussion starts to get even remotely interesting so that it's immediately ended and forgotten and their lack of understanding never comes to light.

Next week they're an expert with containerisation having "attended a webinar" and giving advice to the DevOps team while they grit their teeth and carefully steer the droid away from any nearby keyboard. They're on the phone to customers promising technologies they heard about that morning that the developers either dismissed as unsuitable or lack the resources to implement.

Suffice it to say that change in any technological organisation is something, quite often, to be desperately avoided and if it does happen then the faster it occurs then the more undesirable it is.

The Grand Game likes stability and little, slow, amount of change.

As some managers parrot but seldom seem to put into practice, it must be handled carefully, managed even, so that its impact is spread out.

And, ultimately, that change must have an actual purpose and not be something happening on a whim, to curry favour up the food chain, or be something that's read in a magazine, barely understood, and as a result immediately on the agenda for the next team meeting.

[1]: Many people preach the acceptance of the aging process but I'm not afraid to say that I think it sucks. I can't wait either for an android (not Android, Cthulhu no!) body or an upload to some more pleasant simulatd environment where I can choose a more suitable form for myself. Yes, I'm one of those people. [2]: It was jarring enough when macOS changed the default login shell from bash to zsh, rather than migrate fully I work with both now as I just can't let go of bash. [3]: I saw workplace, but I do primarily mean just the place where we work whether it's from home, up a mountain, in a cellar, or even (unfortunately) an office. [4]: Generally hiring managers, recruiters, other company's interview droids. [5]: Fall, to our cousins. [6]: Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, and pretty much everyone else who posts 300 times a day and doesn't have an actual job other than looking for likes, clicks, and subscribes for their latest "free ebook". Sound familiar?