Ben Milligan


Respect the Chain

Working in the technical support space for going on 20 years will develop some certain tendencies. You learn to de-escalate seemingly naturally, almost to a fault. You also learn that these roles are seen as steps as opposed to floors and ceilings.

One societal aspect that comes about is the 'looking down' at the work done by technical support folks. Think 'Dirty Jobs' with Mike Rowe. It's a service job, and in a modern 1st world ethos there is a perceived lack of appreciation and/or respect for all things work related that are 'beneath' a person. Personally, I don't really have much weight in these opinions however it's the general nature of this that is insidious to a successful culture and country as a whole.

There's a personal aspect to what we do 'for a living', in that we all work to find a way in life to survive and sometimes thrive. Roles are filled by need in a society, or create a new need, and this is an ever-moving evolution in human culture. These roles create a chain to which we all end up relying on. The technology that is so readily available now requires so many links of the chain that not a single one person would be able to replicate it, even with the the deepest of understandings on how the technology works.

As an example, imagine trying to create a cellular phone from scratch. How does one create the glass for the screen from sand? Then, which metals can we mine to create a CPU? How does one wire up a CPU to make it work? What about the lithium in the battery, and how to make the plastic casing? What makes so much of our technology possible are the layers and layers of supply chains created by human beings over long periods of time. Each link creates a dependency, and from there it goes on and on, to the degree our specialized society has dependencies on millions of people we have never met and never will.

Respect the chain. The links that you would never forge yourself are just as required.

5/2/2024