The Care and Feeding of Meat Computers: Episode 1 – A Companion Guide

Welcome to The Care and Feeding of Meat Computers

The article you've stumbled across is the first in a collection of five blog posts meant to be an extension of The Care and Feeding of Meat Computers series which I’m releasing on the Rising Tide YouTube channel, born from a talk I shared at MSPGeekCon 2023. These companion guides are intended to help provide links to resources, research, and books that informed parts of this collection. The goal is to give you enough information and connections so you can dig into these concepts, including things that I cut from the talks for time or other organizational, boring reasons. I am also going to include some questions at the end of each guide to help you facilitate conversation with your team or to further deepen it!

Before we go much further, it's important to me to also extend my gratitude to the people who helped me make sure this talk happened in the first place. Heather and Brian at Gozynta encouraged me as I wrote and honed this concept the first time and generously sponsored me to attend MSPGeekCon and give this talk. Matt Fox, for the reliable perspective, fresh jokes, and tots. Alicia Gregory for academic and psychological insight, a cache of useful journal articles, and listening to me cry basically bi-weekly for nearly a decade.

Of course, last but not least, my business partner, Mendy Green, for believing in me and that this concept needed to see the light of day at all instead of just our five-minute-long WhatsApp voice notes.

Who this talk is for? You.

If you’re here, there’s a good chance you’re involved in technology, whether you follow Rising Tide, are a part of the MSPGeek community, or otherwise found this series while searching the depths of the internet. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, come on in, make a cup of something warm, and have a seat. I hope that you will find each word expressing my sincere love to the tech community, specifically to those often-unsung heroes, the nerds whose daily, Sisyphean job is to balance the science behind tech with the increasingly important art of human understanding.  

This series is for those of you who may feel (or those of you who manage and collaborate with those who feel) more at home with your hard skills compared to soft skills. It’s completely understandable: in our society, and especially in tech, we tend to believe hard skills are the “real” skills, while soft skills are secondary or nice-to-have. But don’t let your imposter syndrome about the places you feel weak dictate what is real or true! Just because something can easily be expressed through certifications doesn’t mean they are more valuable or will help you live a more fulfilling life. In fact, you may have even been called “gifted” when it comes to technology, and as such, choose to feed that part of you, first. If we consider some of the theories about giftedness, specifically Renzulli’s three-ring conception of it, giftedness for any skill comes from ability, creativity, and commitment.  

My goal with this series is to challenge the view that hard skills are respected and most prized; and to encourage us to reframe “soft skills” not as something separate or less-than, but as essential, accessible, and attainable, intertwined with our technical expertise. We may not come by it naturally, as in an above-average-ability, but with creativity and commitment, we can develop these skills as well!

I specifically want us to look at soft skills in a way that outright refuses the notion that as you are, you are bad, undesirable, or unacceptable. While there are certain social standards that you may have been trained to adhere to, I want you to put those rules aside for these conversations. If you’ve ever felt like you’re expected to fit a mold to be successful—whether to be more charismatic, more structured, or even more proper—this series is for you.  

Being you is a good thing to be.

I’ve held a ton of jobs in a wide variety of industries and tiers of responsibilities. Despite my breadth and depth of experience and knowledge, I’m not interested in being revered as an expert. Experts tell you what you’re supposed to do and exactly how you’re supposed to do it to guarantee success. I’m sure my disdain for this snake-oily social power dynamic shows consistently in things I say and my approach in this series. Why the sass regarding experts? I want you to know and truly embrace the fact that your value as a tech professional goes beyond fitting into the boxes people want to put you in. Your value as a tech professional goes beyond fitting into the boxes you want to put yourself in! I’m not an expert, experts want you to be like them. I want you to be like you.  

You have these skills: you have social skills, you have people skills, you have soft skills. Regardless of if they fit into what some expert tells you is “correct,” if you’re a little bit weird, I want you to embrace it.

You’re here because you’re passionate about technical solutions, and you’re here because you’re looking for ways to develop further yourself and your community. I propose to you that your passion for technology is actually a powerful tool, if not the most powerful tool, in developing your soft skills. You can use your technical intelligence to boost your Emotional Intelligence.

It’s time to stop kidding ourselves that hard skills are technical and measurable while that soft skills are just a “personality trait” exemplified by gentle people like women and mothers. This belief implies two terrible, not-true things:  

1. some people just “have it” and are naturally good team players while there are others who are destined to never expand beyond their personal hangups.  

2. people with only hard skills and no soft skills are the only ones who make good business people and leaders.  

This is a disservice to you and those who you work with. You have soft skills, and developing and enhancing them is vital to your personal and professional growth. Here’s the thing: soft skills are hard. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth shaping or that they’re out of your reach as a technical, linear-minded person. Soft skills are hard-won through life experiences, loss, pain, and PRACTICE.

These concepts fold neatly into coding ideologies like Human-Centered Design and Human-Computer Interaction. You are technical, you are practical. Humans are hard. Let’s reframe this to help ourselves be more successful. I propose that soft skills aren’t the opposite of hard skills, but an evolution of them, and if you find them hard, perhaps you just need to look at humans as what they are: complex meat computers that really just want to do what they can to survive and thrive in the world they’ve inherited, just like you.  

So together, let’s flip the script and let’s start with reframing a questions we often ask, to see how we can better harness our natural penchant for hard skills and alchemize them into above average soft skills.  

Join me as we elevate the question, “Why aren’t people more like computers?” to “Why might people be too much like computers?” Instead of following a set of rules, I want you to ask yourself, “what if I treat people with just as much care and curiosity as I treat computers? What would my life, my job, and my relationships look like, instead?”

Video Chapters

• Soft Skills are Hard It’s ok to admit that soft skills are harder to you than hard skills. It’s not ok to never develop them further. Know your limits. And then dare to go further.  

• Nuance rules over Rules Life is complicated. You don’t need a list of rules to know what right looks like. What is the heart of the laws you’ve been given? Mindlessly following rules will rarely get you the results you dream of.  

• People over Tech Services work is rarely about the technical part and more about being curious and care-full about the people in our care!

• People over Stack Success comes from bringing your entire self to the table. No two people, no two MSPs are alike.

• People are Puzzles worth solving How do we, as technical people who love to solve puzzles, look as humans as solvable puzzles instead of pain points?

• People are Tech It’s not that humans are not like computers, it’s perhaps that they are too much like them.

Additional Resources and Recommended Reading

To deepen the concepts discussed in this series, here are several resources for further exploration:

Terms and Concepts

• MSP (Managed Service Provider) - Companies that remotely manage a customer’s IT infrastructure and systems

• Sisyphean - A task that feels endless and difficult, based on the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who had to roll a boulder up a hill forever

• Hard skills - Skills that involve specific knowledge or abilities, often technical, that can be measured or certified

• Soft skills - Personal skills like communication, empathy, and teamwork that help you work well with others

• Imposter syndrome - A feeling that you’re not as capable or skilled as others believe, even if you are

• Snake-oil - Something that is falsely advertised or exaggerated, originally referring to fake medicine

• Social power dynamic - How power and influence are distributed in social interactions or society

• Human-Centered Design - An approach to creating products that considers people’s needs, wants, and limitations.

• Human-Computer Interaction - The study of how people interact with computers and design technology that is easy and enjoyable to use.

• Emotional Intelligence (EQ) - The ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions in yourself and others.

Books and Research

• Emotional Intelligence ‍
  • How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence - Professional & Executive Development | Harvard DCE

• Human Centered Design ‍
  • What Is Human-Centered Design? | HBS Online  ‍
  • Full article: Knowledge is not everything

• Giftedness
  • The Renzulli Model: Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness | Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development
  • Giftedness + ADHD + Autism - Tending Paths

Questions for Team Reflection

If you’re watching this series with a team, here are some questions to guide your discussion and help you make the most of these ideas:

1. Favorite Tech: What is your favorite piece of tech? What is the best device or tool you’ve used or owned? Why is it your favorite? How much time did you spend configuring its settings and developing your own abilities to use it?  

2. Self-Assessment: Which soft skills come naturally to you, and which feel more challenging to develop? How do these impact your day-to-day work with clients or teammates?

3. Curiosity as a Tool: Have there been times when a “difficult” user or teammate surprised you with their insights or perspective? How might approaching people with curiosity change your interactions?

4. Rule Reflection: Are there any industry “rules” you follow that don’t serve you or your team well? Where did they come from? How can you find the “why” behind those rules and adapt them to fit your context? If there isn’t a good “why”...why are you still doing it?  

5. Growth Areas: What soft skill do you most want to develop? Consider using the resources linked above as a starting point to dive deeper into that area.

That’s it for Episode 1! Tune in for our next Episode: The most expensive piece of technology you’ll ever see.  

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