We have "growth hackers" but no "stability hackers." "Disruptors" but no "preservers." Our entire vocabulary is oriented toward the new. We have no language for the equally difficult work of keeping existing things from falling apart.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-maintainer/
@Daojoan
Maintaining the status quo is core sysadmin work
@Daojoan enjoyed this! For anyone interested in digging further into the study of maintenance and repair check out this study guide from The Maintainers:
@Daojoan I've been bothered for a long time by the fact that we have a word for "startup" but we don't have a word for "keepgoing".
@Daojoan this seems to cover the territory of many of those who shoot through the ranks at work. Lots of high visibility stuff that 'revolutionises' the work of departments, but don't stick around long enough to be accountable for it actually working or having sustained implementation. Others have to do the long term work of documentation and maintenance, the boring work of updating systems and records, the cross checking and compliance.
@Daojoan sounds so conservative
@Daojoan
Christensen is rolling in his grave at the current SV use of "disruption".
@Daojoan You refer to a Certified Public Accountant. We are the only profession with an obligation to maintain an attitude of professional skepticism to the new and unproven. The training lends to preservation and stability.
@Daojoan
Enduring
Sustained
Maintaining
Thanks @Daojoan, I enjoyed this piece. I remember coming to realise how deeply all I valued depends on maintenance. (And I also remember, in my case, the sense of grief at how bad my ADHD ass was at the kind of maintenance I admire most in others. I didn't yet know that would change: part of that incompetence was inexperience, not ADHD.)
@Daojoan @astridpoot it's true, also "maintenance" is seen as undesirable as apposed to highly appreciated and needed
We do have "maintainers" though?
@Daojoan sounds a lot like the Futurists vs the arts and craft movement
@Daojoan There are lots of systems in the world that have been orphaned in terms of there being any remaining people who truly understand how they work. Some people operate under the delusion that they /think/ they know how they work but are utterly incapable of synthesizing those systems, while others simply don't give it a second thought, push the buttons, pull the levers and feed the beasts.
https://empathy.guru/2022/05/16/of-jet-engines-dune-and-psychopaths/
@Daojoan Funny. Was thinking about this today, in the context of Social Media. It's all based on FOMO, in the pursuit of cashing in. It completely devalues what you already have in your life, and how you could make better use of THAT.
@Daojoan I'll read this in a bit. Gotta go listen to Maiden first!
@Daojoan the unsaid part is that these are the majority.
@Daojoan "don't dent other peoples' universe"
said no technology luminary, ever.
@Daojoan it's like that for academic grant funds too. Strong emphasis on being innovative, no funding for long-term continuous monitoring of things, even though the datasets those produce are far more valuable than flash-in-the-pan whatever's-trendy.
@Daojoan I once did a contract with a Seattle s/w company, happy there until I overheard the president say "I love selling software! You can ship broken software, charge them to come 'troubleshoot', and charge them again for a newer version. Repeat!"
I closed the contract, walked away.
@Daojoan it's overlooked work, but it's what I professionally do in higher education information technology. Keep systems operating for hundreds of thousands of users.
@Daojoan the top expression of this destructive tech bro language has been DOGE.
It is really eye opening how walking that talk can destroy institutions, and people’s lives without consequences for the perps.
@Daojoan I feel this in my bones. The only indispensable employee of my massive uni was for the longest time the ancient COBOL dev who maintained our homegrown student information system. For decades, seriously. No one will be as important to the institution as that guy ever again. (Which I fear is part of the point.)
@Daojoan I feel this in my bones. The only indispensable employee of my massive uni was for the longest time the ancient COBOL dev who maintained our homegrown student information system. For decades, seriously. No one will be as important to the institution as that guy ever again. (Which I fear is part of the point.)
@Daojoan Words that are used in a society are very telling indeed.
But… conservationists? It’s in the name. Librarians, maintainers… they exist. It’s just that they are valued less (found boring) than innovators under all different names
@Daojoan Robert MacFarlane, nature writer in "Is a River Alive?" 2025 gives us the words to animate rivers in promotion of the global movement to recognize rivers similar to the status of corporations. Macfarlane explores how modern industrial language treats a river as a "resource" (a thing to be used), whereas many Indigenous and emerging legal frameworks treat it as a "relative" or "person." Magpie River (Canada)
@Daojoan the balancers
@Daojoan
which is particularly odd in a time when people who call themselves ‘conservative’ are in the political ascendance...
@Daojoan
Move slow and repair things.
@Daojoan great article. It feels like too much in our modern world is falling apart from lack of maintenance, from public infrastructure to core parts of our democracy. We definitely need people to do the hard work of maintenance.
@Daojoan duh, because there is no big profit margins in it.
Tech companies struggle with simple IT support tasks, even when receiving lots of money they can't be bothered to engage because "opportunity cost" says someone is trying another crypto coin and they should be first to pick it up to short it high.
Society somehow understands that maintenance is important but this not a question you will see be driven politically 🤷♂️
This overheated world, however, means we cannot try to keep existing things from falling apart when so many of the things that we have in here I’m talking about infrastructure and modes of production cannot operate in the environment, the global financial and industrial core has created.
I do not use the word “we” because it is not what the majority of people asked for and because we are only allowing the options they produce, we are forced to choose.
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