I could give countless examples of well-intentioned, scientifically minded technologists who suffer deeply in these systems. The problem isn’t their capability or intentions—it’s that they’ve been systematically trained to ignore the very feedback loops that could help them succeed.
The Training We Don’t Recognize
Most of us have been conditioned through educational and professional environments that reward individual performance over systemic understanding. We learn to focus on our piece of the puzzle while remaining blind to the larger system at play.
Real-World Examples
The Database Optimization Trap
A senior database engineer I knew spent months optimizing query performance, achieving impressive improvements on paper. However, the application’s overall performance remained poor because the real bottleneck was in the API layer’s session management. He had been trained to see only his domain, missing the system-wide feedback.
The Code Review Culture
Teams implement rigorous code review processes believing they’re improving quality. Yet they often create systems where:
- Developers avoid complex changes
- Innovation slows to a crawl
- Knowledge sharing decreases as reviews become adversarial
The feedback loop tells us the process isn’t working, but we’re trained to blame individual behavior rather than examine the system.
Why We Ignore the Obvious
The training comes from:
- Reductionist Education: We learn to break problems into smaller parts but lose sight of emergent properties
- Metrics Culture: We optimize for what’s measurable, ignoring what’s truly valuable
- Blame Culture: When things go wrong, we look for individual failures rather than system failures
Breaking Free from the Training
To escape these trained blindnesses:
- Ask System Questions: Instead of “Who did this wrong?” ask “What system produced this outcome?”
- Follow the Loops: Trace how your actions create reactions throughout the system
- Embrace Paradox: Accept that improving one part might degrade the whole
The Path Forward
The technologists suffering in these systems aren’t broken—they’re trapped by training that makes them systemically blind. Once we see the training for what it is, we can begin to untrain ourselves and see the feedback loops that have been there all along.
Remember: The system is perfectly designed to produce the results it gets. If you don’t like the results, question the system, not the people in it.
