It’s college football season here in the US and that means I get lots of quality time with my husband watching. So. Much. Football. During a game this past Saturday a promo came on about players visiting kids with cancer using these little robots that reminded me of Number 5 from Short Circuit (another childhood favorite I'll be forcing on my kids soon). It was cool, because the players could beam in remotely, right? So that meant fewer germs, easier scheduling, and possibly more visits.
My first reaction was the easy one: oh, how sweet. Isn't it great what technology can do? This is a win-win! But at the same time a less comfortable thought crept in: is it really?
Before robots, those players would have had to show up and walk hospital halls. Maybe they'd hear a tough story from the staff or see a kid wearing their jersey who's lost half their body weight. Maybe they’d meet a kid who talks about playing football "when they get better" with the kind of hope that lifts you up and also breaks you. I bet they’d have dozens of unplanned moments that they would carry home, and that would ignite something that echoes into other parts of their lives. But with robots? Log in, smile, wave, log off. It's caring, yes. But only as much as the minimum requires.
This particular feel-good story stood out to me because I’ve been interviewing for Technical Project Manager roles, where improving team efficiency is a big part of the job. Without question, I would focus on that, but I also want to stay mindful of all the “inefficient” things that actually do important but invisible work.
How many times have you unexpectedly gained something that you didn’t know you needed, after taking an extra step that you didn't really have time for? These moments happen in the margins - in conversations that run over, reviews that dig deeper, meetings where the real issues finally surface. They're messy and unplanned, but they're often where the actual work gets done.
Are we thinking enough about what we're losing when we optimize away these moments? When we chase efficiency, we're always trading something off. When those trade-offs are invisible or taken for granted, we don't realize we're sweeping away meaning in the mess.
This would be one of the biggest things I'd wrestle with as a TPM. Some inefficiencies are just waste, but others are doing work we don't see until it's gone. Great TPMs recognize and protect the second kind while ruthlessly cutting the first. Because if there's one thing I learned while working in QA, minimum viable caring might get us to done but it certainly won't get us to great.