'Management is not work'
In which I explain that management is, indeed, work. But it doesn't look like work because it deals in different material than thermodynamics or information.
On a call with a senior engineer, stuck on the threshold of management, he said that 'management doesn't feel like real work.'
Well, I asked him then, if management doesn't feel like work, then why does typing on a keyboard feel like work?
In this post I will tell you about the three kinds of entropy, and what work looks like in each of them.
Work
One of the definitions of work is the achieving of a reduction of entropy in a particular subsystem. Of course, entropy is always increasing, it being the arrow of time and all that, but you can, through human ingenuity, bring order to a part of the universe that you care about while increasing entropy in some other part that you do not care about yet.
An air-conditioner does the work of cooling a room, reducing the entropy inside the room while spewing out heat on the outside. (Don't @ me, I'm not a physicist).
For a lot of us, the word work implies work done to reduce thermodynamic entropy. Moving stuff around. Melting and shaping steel. Raising buildings. W = Fs and all that. This is traditional work. What I call thermodynamic work.
For a long time, many millenia, this was the only noticable form of work. But this is not the only form of work.
Let's take an example
You and your father the Sultan are in the garrison. Your father lies in his boots, succumbing slowly to the wounds received earlier in the day – a fitting end for a warrior of his status. Great glory awaits him in the Heavens.
And sad as you are, as the eldest son, there is work to be done. "Bring me the fastest messenger", you whisper to your friend and general. Soon enough arrives a young man, worn from the rigors of the campaign but alert and willing. He supplicates himself and awaits your command. You hand him a scroll, locked behind your seal, and bid him to take it to the Prime Minsiter, back in the Capital. "No one must know", you say.
The young man snaps to attention, takes the message, mounts a valiant looking steed and thunders off into the distance, over the low hills and into the black of night.
He will ride like this without rest for 40 hours more. Keeping away from the highways, avoiding robbers, stopping for nothing, no food, no drink, no sleep. He arrives late in the evening, the late fall fog casting ethereal shadows along the palace complex. Watchmen drag him, exhausted and sore, into the chambers of the Prime Minister. The old man receives the message and nods grimly.
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