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Honestly, that’s one of the worst analogies I heard. It adds nothing of value to the old analogy of the managerial position, just placed it in a unnecessary domain specific role which makes it more confusing.

"A surgeon isn't a manager, they do the actual work! But their skills and time are highly leveraged with a support team that handles prep, secondary tasks, admin. The surgeon focuses on the important stuff they are uniquely good at."

All new is good forgotten old - how about Harlan Mills surgical team analogy for software development - www.codeproject.com/articles/The...

I'd say it's rather a foreman with a team of workers at a construction site — similar specifics but closer processual analogy, less pressure, and more fuckuppery...

I'm not a huge fan of analogies I think it often just adds more confusion. In this case how many people have firsthand knowledge of what being a surgeon entails? My only reference is pop culture and I'm not sure greys anatomy is accurate

I think Geoffrey does a good job of expanding the analogy enough for it to be clear even if you don't know how surgeons work

The surgeon analogy has existed at least since Fred Brooks' Mythical Man Month. It makes me wonder if we are essentially repeating all our learnings from software engineering and project management, in the context of AI.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myt...

Yeah, Geoffrey calls that out in his longer tweet, I really like how it goes full circle to the most influential early software engineering textbook! twitter.com/geoffreylitt...

This is awfully reminiscent of the "chief programmer team" idea that Brooks described in 1975 in The Mythical Man-Month (which he apparently attributes to Harlan Mills in 1971).