I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this essay. Musk's ontological error is at least as old politics itself. Socrates complained about the arrogance of the craftsmen who really did have technical knowledge but who thought their technical knowledge was the same as sound political judgment.
If only they had understood networks and nature better, they might have written the code for more sustainable and generative networked ecosystems (aka humanity's institutional frameworks), rather than the frameworks that have a consistent, historical track record of boom and bust. Unfortunately in a world of global digital networked ecosystems controlled by a few software coders we may well see the biggest bust of all. Sooner than later.
I agree with most of your analysis except for 2. Musk's software engineering viewpoint does indeed work the way you describe it, but as a business analyst and software engineer it's wrong. Most of my training for new people focuses on stakeholder concerns, and the reason for this is simple. In Musk's situation he's effectively the stakeholder. In most situations that's untrue. If you produce software that doesn't meet the needs of the stakeholders, misery will ensue. And misery ensues with Musk's product lines, most obviously with the bloody awful cybertruck, but also with cars that catch fire and lock people in them. In fact there is a range of concerns about stakeholder involvement in software. If I am producing financial software then it is almost certain that I will have to abide by multiple regulations depending on the particular marketplace the software product is designed for full stop that is because people in different regions have different needs of financial software and different responsibilities towards the state (& there are many states) depending on legislation. Here's an example from a class I taught: I start off by getting the students who have recently worked on a project to draw a circle in the middle of a sheet of flip chart paper. I then ask them to write the names of stakeholders they consulted who either take information from the system or put information into the system, and join them to the circle with an arrow. After 20 minutes this tends to peter out. I then ask them how many of the people they have listed they actually went and talked to. The answer hovers around 15 to 25% of the names they wrote. I then tell them what will happen next: they will deliver the product, and then people will come out of the woodwork saying "but it doesn't do this!" The "this" it doesn't do will be something important. Here's the point: every time they amend the software from that point onwards is going to cost money and that is why software products run incredibly over budget, including I would suspect Mr Musk's. Yes we expect change, but we don't expect change that occurs because we were too dumb to ask the right questions to start with. I'm suggesting that the need for a door that can be opened if a car catches on fire would be one of the things we should have captured early in the process. You'd be making a strong point if Musk's products were fault free. They're not, as the regular explosions over his rocket launching pad demonstrates. Yes iteration is important but most people who use iteration in software development know what they're doing. Objectively it doesn't look like he does.
If by "normative" you mean "unlikely to succeed", I'd agree. But I'm not. "Normative" (I assume, in the absence of any definition) means "how things are normally done." Oh that they were. The reasons for failure in most organisations is that they don't take a pragmatic approach to analysis, which always starts with understanding the requirements. In fact that approach is usually the one taken after the Musk approach of 'doing it wrong ' until you have no choice but to do it right. Musk's approach to his Mars trip is a good example: the only way to get a colony ship to Mars is probably to build it in space because otherwise the weight would make it require a thrust that would damage the part of the planet it leaves from and so much cash it would bankrupt said planet. Face it: in practical terms the man is an idiot and most of what he's done is poor/someone else's work. Even the method you document is a (poor) version of the agile method. I'm not debating your other points, the man is a menace. One of the things that makes him a menace is lying about his skills and methodology.
Most supply centric entrepreneurs and innovators ultimately fail (or do the most harm) because they don't spend enough time factoring in the demand side. Not just product uptake, but the deleterious costs of their actions on overall demand. They are rabid monopolists and individualists at heart with a winner takes all approach not found in any natural, networked ecosystems.
There is a distinction between enterprise software design and development, and agile. Agile is great, and has its place, but it should be seen as a tool, not a religion.
e.g. "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" ... yeah, if you're building spotify, that's great. the software does one thing, well. The interface has to be designed so a kid can use it. The cost of failure - is someone resets the app, blames the freeze on the phone, and everyone moves on.
If you're developing the middleware that processes financial transactions for a bank. And that middleware is going to be used by banking channels that didn't even exist at the time it was written. And it has to process every transaction perfectly, and audit every transaction perfectly, and processes millions of transactions a month, and will be used for the next 25 years, then those documents are going to be used to train 5 generations of support teams, then the documentation is part of the definition of "working".
This definition slots nicely into the libertarian and OPAS (open, permissionless, anonymous, and settlement-free) internet that replaced the democratically minded, albeit flawed, universal service aspirations of the government-mandated monopoly telephone companies prior to the introduction of competition in the 1970s and 80s. After that everything "digital" was about arbitraging away the settlements supporting universal service and closed, analog, vertically integrated stacks. No one even considers the former today as universal service was finally killed off in 2006.
The untrusting, IP-centric, OPAS generation of entrepreneurs, such as Musk, Thiel, Black (Satoshi), and Altman, never appreciated (and never anticipated) that everything is a network and series of networked ecosystems that resemble (but are different) to those found in nature. What is more important, the individual actor or the network? Both. The problem is that humanity's networks lack the sustainable and generative features we find in nature which are never in a state of equilibria. Interestingly, the aforementioned entrepreneurs are commonly interested in creative destruction (The Austrian School) of the institutional networks supporting: the environment and diversity, privacy, money, and creativity, respectively.
Fantastic and important piece,a clearly stated and incisive psychological and philosophical analysis of the current ( and most potentially catastrophic) manifestation of the attempt to create a utopia of precision and mathematical efficiency in a realm inhabited by human beings with emotions, instincts, and creative http://intelligences.In the end it will fail as it will inhibit the underlying creative impulses that are its source,or destroy its host entirely.
I appreciate the insights in this article regarding Musk's view of all-is-software, that genuinely sheds some light on the entire DOGE project and Musk's personal comments. The parallels to Ford are also very insightful.
I would like to push back on the uncritical labeling of Musk as a "genius" or referrences to his innovations and contributions without interrogating whether those innovations or contributions were actually good or worthwhile. Yes, he has made an incredible amount of money. Yes, his companies have innovated and changed the way that electric cars and rockets are manufactured. But to what end? Have these innovations made the world a better place? Have they improved society, or increased human flurishing? Or, have they just found a new way to build more crap we don't need and sell it to more people? And, in the meantime, given him disgusting sums of money which he is able to use to pollute the world's online information ecosystem and buy access to the White House.
I think an element of the everything-is-software mindset that didn't get explored in this article is the idea that innovation or disruption or doing things faster or more efficiently is inherently good and therefore worth pursuing. All of these things are worthless unless they are in pursuit of things that are truly Good, Beautiful, or True.
A practical point: I doubt that BYD used Musk's "method" to develop its electric cars and quick charging units. What it looks like to me is that BYD saw the Musk method flaws (and product flaws) and did some engineering of its own around them.
I wouldn't disagree. See my comments about Musk's software engineering prowess further down the page. If he's doing software engineering the right way he's got a lot of explaining to do.
The psychological assessment covers the bases. Let's not confuse rationalizing with embracing the naked truth. The man has skills but no moral base -- a pathology.
I thought this was very insightful, and it certainly provides an interesting and clarifying way to think about Musk.
Two quibbles though:
(1) One small place where your scheme felt wrong was in the issue of dealing with bad actors, which you say software does and government doesn't. This seems backwards, because one of the basic functions of government is law enforcement, which is precisely dealing with bad actors.
(2) A more serious objection, although it may just be terminological, is the use of "software" to mean something like "the software of giant consumer platform companies". That's not the only kind of software there is, and there is software that encourages more end-user control. This is what the original visions of personal computing, open-source, and end-user computing were all about.
In the same vein, "Move fast and break things" is not really the motto of the software industry, its the motto of a particularly noxious Silicon Valley mindset, which is only a part of it.
I don't like ceding words like "software" or "technology" to their worst manifestations. Especially since all institutions these days are basically governed with software. Musk's problem with government is not that he treats it like software but like bad, anti-human software.
The deeper issue is not that Musk mistakes politics for software.
It’s that more of governance is actually becoming software-shaped at the execution layer, while legitimacy remains organized around older constitutional forms.
The crisis begins when execution migrates faster than legitimacy can metabolize.
Brilliant analysis. Even with my decades-long involvement in aspects of software development, I'd not spotted this. Works well as an explanation.
Yet Musk's psychology, as with most human things, may be overdetermined -- have more than one true causal story to tell about it. His racism, and Thiel's, also has obvious roots in white South African culture, in which both of them spent large parts of their childhood. Overdetermination itself may be something unrecognized in software development paradigms? (Not sure on that. My dev background is on a pedestrian level.)
I would have thought that Brock’s description of Musk’s software engineer worldview covers this behaviour. Sexual congress, for a one dimensional man like Musk, is purely a transaction for utilitarian purpose. An act to make experimental replicants of himself. It also follows that he will crush any creative child he has fathered through his malignant narcissism. Only favouring those children who display a similar narrow emotional landscape.
I read this. - "...designates them for elimination...". Interesting essay and nice connection to software-think. Could the last paragraph / summary had something about the fact they are going to be responsible for "eliminating" billions of people and that they are cxnts.
Mike et al., I do not believe there is a need to "overthink" this. The dichotomy between (a) having technical expertise and (b) having "A" as part of a package that involves caring, concern, compassion, cooperation, and coordination is very much what Dee Hock wrote about in "The Birth of the Chaordic Age." Hock talked about the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition (opportunism†). He contrasted those with their opposites: Humility, Benevolence*, Altruism, and Magnanimity**.
†As a style of human behavior, opportunism has the connotation of a lack of integrity or doing something that is out of character (inconsistent). The underlying thought is that the price of unrestrained selfishness is behavioral inconsistency. Thus, opportunism involves compromising some or other principles normally upheld. Thus, substantively, opportunism refers to acting on opportunities in a self-interested, biased, or one-sided manner that conflicts with or contradicts one or more general rules, laws, norms, or principles. (Wikipedia)
* willingness to act to benefit others
** taking actions for noble purposes
Musk certainly fits the bill for showing "eeaa," and those with excessive ego coupled with ambition often succeed in today's world of amassing financial wealth.
I agree with John Robertson's comment earlier about not conflating technical prowess with virtue, character, humanity, or any of the "C" words mentioned in my first sentence. Early on in medicine, I encountered physicians who were extremely brilliant, but their interactions with patients were a total non sequitur: they were passionless, cold, poorly communicative, and overtly uncaring. I have come across extremely "successful" physicians who never physically touched a patient. One told me not to get involved and have feelings towards my patients, and that I "need to learn the art of dispassionate enthusiasm." Another, a famous cardiologist, after bilking one of my cancer patients by ordering blatantly unnecessary tests in his office replied with "Dr. S, you don't know the name of the game."
What we have here is the difference between those who are both bright and technically skilled, but who also have an ethic or credo that involves humanity.
Musk has achieved notable things, but his sick ego, depravity, and underdeveloped personality have diminished those achievements. It is difficult to be both a gentle man and a scholar. Most people are easily taken in by the Musks and Trumps of this world. Not so many, in contrast, by the complete individuals. I have met many of the latter, and often they only gained appreciation late in life or after they had died.
In our political world today, names that come to mind are Bernie Sanders, Raphael Warnock, and perhaps most recently, Analilia Mejia. I add Mejia tentatively, but from what I have heard from her so far, she seems to me to be the kind of person I would want as POTUS, as well as the others I have noted. And all of those who we elect to offices that affect the way the world may evolve should be of similar character, with the utmost vetting done prior to any election.
Musk lacks the virtues and aspirations of Plato's ideal leaders. Unfortunately, Plato and the other philosophers did not understand that everything is a network so they couldn't think of a better system that resembles the networks found in nature.
Perhaps Musk et al would benefit from reading Stephen Jay Gould's writing about the "non-overlapping magisteria" of religion and science, and reflect that perhaps software development and politics are similarly non-overlapping...
A couple of thoughts about a very insightful post.
Few things are more dangerous than a great strength that leads to great success. The confidence that persists through resistance and disappointments and that contributes to remarkable accomplishments is the "conjoined twin" with the arrogance that is blind to limitations, errors, and misapplications.
This is related to paradoxes of specialization. What is done effectively is at the cost of what is not. When a specialized life form is placed in a different environment/system (through change or "transplant"), the choices before that this species faces come down to "charge or die." In the case of a leader, the effects on the relevant systems are broad and deep.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is humbling. The more complex and undetermined a living system is, then the more likely that an "input" will produce an unexpected "output," which very well may be adverse.
This is not a counsel for inaction, which has its own unintended consequences. Rather, it provides reasons for caution, embracing diversity of ideas, a "big picture, long term" perspective, humility about the limits of what can be known and done. A keen sense of values and ethical-moral discernment also is indicated.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this essay. Musk's ontological error is at least as old politics itself. Socrates complained about the arrogance of the craftsmen who really did have technical knowledge but who thought their technical knowledge was the same as sound political judgment.
If only they had understood networks and nature better, they might have written the code for more sustainable and generative networked ecosystems (aka humanity's institutional frameworks), rather than the frameworks that have a consistent, historical track record of boom and bust. Unfortunately in a world of global digital networked ecosystems controlled by a few software coders we may well see the biggest bust of all. Sooner than later.
John, I agree. See my comment to Mike.
I agree with most of your analysis except for 2. Musk's software engineering viewpoint does indeed work the way you describe it, but as a business analyst and software engineer it's wrong. Most of my training for new people focuses on stakeholder concerns, and the reason for this is simple. In Musk's situation he's effectively the stakeholder. In most situations that's untrue. If you produce software that doesn't meet the needs of the stakeholders, misery will ensue. And misery ensues with Musk's product lines, most obviously with the bloody awful cybertruck, but also with cars that catch fire and lock people in them. In fact there is a range of concerns about stakeholder involvement in software. If I am producing financial software then it is almost certain that I will have to abide by multiple regulations depending on the particular marketplace the software product is designed for full stop that is because people in different regions have different needs of financial software and different responsibilities towards the state (& there are many states) depending on legislation. Here's an example from a class I taught: I start off by getting the students who have recently worked on a project to draw a circle in the middle of a sheet of flip chart paper. I then ask them to write the names of stakeholders they consulted who either take information from the system or put information into the system, and join them to the circle with an arrow. After 20 minutes this tends to peter out. I then ask them how many of the people they have listed they actually went and talked to. The answer hovers around 15 to 25% of the names they wrote. I then tell them what will happen next: they will deliver the product, and then people will come out of the woodwork saying "but it doesn't do this!" The "this" it doesn't do will be something important. Here's the point: every time they amend the software from that point onwards is going to cost money and that is why software products run incredibly over budget, including I would suspect Mr Musk's. Yes we expect change, but we don't expect change that occurs because we were too dumb to ask the right questions to start with. I'm suggesting that the need for a door that can be opened if a car catches on fire would be one of the things we should have captured early in the process. You'd be making a strong point if Musk's products were fault free. They're not, as the regular explosions over his rocket launching pad demonstrates. Yes iteration is important but most people who use iteration in software development know what they're doing. Objectively it doesn't look like he does.
I might suggest you are making a normative argument when you say his business approach is "wrong". I was not.
If by "normative" you mean "unlikely to succeed", I'd agree. But I'm not. "Normative" (I assume, in the absence of any definition) means "how things are normally done." Oh that they were. The reasons for failure in most organisations is that they don't take a pragmatic approach to analysis, which always starts with understanding the requirements. In fact that approach is usually the one taken after the Musk approach of 'doing it wrong ' until you have no choice but to do it right. Musk's approach to his Mars trip is a good example: the only way to get a colony ship to Mars is probably to build it in space because otherwise the weight would make it require a thrust that would damage the part of the planet it leaves from and so much cash it would bankrupt said planet. Face it: in practical terms the man is an idiot and most of what he's done is poor/someone else's work. Even the method you document is a (poor) version of the agile method. I'm not debating your other points, the man is a menace. One of the things that makes him a menace is lying about his skills and methodology.
Most supply centric entrepreneurs and innovators ultimately fail (or do the most harm) because they don't spend enough time factoring in the demand side. Not just product uptake, but the deleterious costs of their actions on overall demand. They are rabid monopolists and individualists at heart with a winner takes all approach not found in any natural, networked ecosystems.
There is a distinction between enterprise software design and development, and agile. Agile is great, and has its place, but it should be seen as a tool, not a religion.
e.g. "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" ... yeah, if you're building spotify, that's great. the software does one thing, well. The interface has to be designed so a kid can use it. The cost of failure - is someone resets the app, blames the freeze on the phone, and everyone moves on.
If you're developing the middleware that processes financial transactions for a bank. And that middleware is going to be used by banking channels that didn't even exist at the time it was written. And it has to process every transaction perfectly, and audit every transaction perfectly, and processes millions of transactions a month, and will be used for the next 25 years, then those documents are going to be used to train 5 generations of support teams, then the documentation is part of the definition of "working".
This definition slots nicely into the libertarian and OPAS (open, permissionless, anonymous, and settlement-free) internet that replaced the democratically minded, albeit flawed, universal service aspirations of the government-mandated monopoly telephone companies prior to the introduction of competition in the 1970s and 80s. After that everything "digital" was about arbitraging away the settlements supporting universal service and closed, analog, vertically integrated stacks. No one even considers the former today as universal service was finally killed off in 2006.
The untrusting, IP-centric, OPAS generation of entrepreneurs, such as Musk, Thiel, Black (Satoshi), and Altman, never appreciated (and never anticipated) that everything is a network and series of networked ecosystems that resemble (but are different) to those found in nature. What is more important, the individual actor or the network? Both. The problem is that humanity's networks lack the sustainable and generative features we find in nature which are never in a state of equilibria. Interestingly, the aforementioned entrepreneurs are commonly interested in creative destruction (The Austrian School) of the institutional networks supporting: the environment and diversity, privacy, money, and creativity, respectively.
Fantastic and important piece,a clearly stated and incisive psychological and philosophical analysis of the current ( and most potentially catastrophic) manifestation of the attempt to create a utopia of precision and mathematical efficiency in a realm inhabited by human beings with emotions, instincts, and creative http://intelligences.In the end it will fail as it will inhibit the underlying creative impulses that are its source,or destroy its host entirely.
I appreciate the insights in this article regarding Musk's view of all-is-software, that genuinely sheds some light on the entire DOGE project and Musk's personal comments. The parallels to Ford are also very insightful.
I would like to push back on the uncritical labeling of Musk as a "genius" or referrences to his innovations and contributions without interrogating whether those innovations or contributions were actually good or worthwhile. Yes, he has made an incredible amount of money. Yes, his companies have innovated and changed the way that electric cars and rockets are manufactured. But to what end? Have these innovations made the world a better place? Have they improved society, or increased human flurishing? Or, have they just found a new way to build more crap we don't need and sell it to more people? And, in the meantime, given him disgusting sums of money which he is able to use to pollute the world's online information ecosystem and buy access to the White House.
I think an element of the everything-is-software mindset that didn't get explored in this article is the idea that innovation or disruption or doing things faster or more efficiently is inherently good and therefore worth pursuing. All of these things are worthless unless they are in pursuit of things that are truly Good, Beautiful, or True.
A practical point: I doubt that BYD used Musk's "method" to develop its electric cars and quick charging units. What it looks like to me is that BYD saw the Musk method flaws (and product flaws) and did some engineering of its own around them.
I couldn’t get past the fact that you think Musk is an engineering genius and came up with any of that stuff himself. I am disappointed Mike.
I wouldn't disagree. See my comments about Musk's software engineering prowess further down the page. If he's doing software engineering the right way he's got a lot of explaining to do.
I am a retired software engineer of over 35 years. I saw an example of his “coding”. He is what we used to call a script-kiddie.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/doonesbury/strip/archive/2025/03/16
The psychological assessment covers the bases. Let's not confuse rationalizing with embracing the naked truth. The man has skills but no moral base -- a pathology.
I thought this was very insightful, and it certainly provides an interesting and clarifying way to think about Musk.
Two quibbles though:
(1) One small place where your scheme felt wrong was in the issue of dealing with bad actors, which you say software does and government doesn't. This seems backwards, because one of the basic functions of government is law enforcement, which is precisely dealing with bad actors.
(2) A more serious objection, although it may just be terminological, is the use of "software" to mean something like "the software of giant consumer platform companies". That's not the only kind of software there is, and there is software that encourages more end-user control. This is what the original visions of personal computing, open-source, and end-user computing were all about.
In the same vein, "Move fast and break things" is not really the motto of the software industry, its the motto of a particularly noxious Silicon Valley mindset, which is only a part of it.
I don't like ceding words like "software" or "technology" to their worst manifestations. Especially since all institutions these days are basically governed with software. Musk's problem with government is not that he treats it like software but like bad, anti-human software.
The deeper issue is not that Musk mistakes politics for software.
It’s that more of governance is actually becoming software-shaped at the execution layer, while legitimacy remains organized around older constitutional forms.
The crisis begins when execution migrates faster than legitimacy can metabolize.
Brilliant analysis. Even with my decades-long involvement in aspects of software development, I'd not spotted this. Works well as an explanation.
Yet Musk's psychology, as with most human things, may be overdetermined -- have more than one true causal story to tell about it. His racism, and Thiel's, also has obvious roots in white South African culture, in which both of them spent large parts of their childhood. Overdetermination itself may be something unrecognized in software development paradigms? (Not sure on that. My dev background is on a pedestrian level.)
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/27/elon_musk_south_africa
Did you touch on his fetish of having male white ivf babies and abandoning them and moving on to next baby mama?
I would have thought that Brock’s description of Musk’s software engineer worldview covers this behaviour. Sexual congress, for a one dimensional man like Musk, is purely a transaction for utilitarian purpose. An act to make experimental replicants of himself. It also follows that he will crush any creative child he has fathered through his malignant narcissism. Only favouring those children who display a similar narrow emotional landscape.
Yeah.
And anybody with his views and actions around children, motherhood and civilization should not be near power, to shape policy.
I read this. - "...designates them for elimination...". Interesting essay and nice connection to software-think. Could the last paragraph / summary had something about the fact they are going to be responsible for "eliminating" billions of people and that they are cxnts.
Mike et al., I do not believe there is a need to "overthink" this. The dichotomy between (a) having technical expertise and (b) having "A" as part of a package that involves caring, concern, compassion, cooperation, and coordination is very much what Dee Hock wrote about in "The Birth of the Chaordic Age." Hock talked about the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition (opportunism†). He contrasted those with their opposites: Humility, Benevolence*, Altruism, and Magnanimity**.
†As a style of human behavior, opportunism has the connotation of a lack of integrity or doing something that is out of character (inconsistent). The underlying thought is that the price of unrestrained selfishness is behavioral inconsistency. Thus, opportunism involves compromising some or other principles normally upheld. Thus, substantively, opportunism refers to acting on opportunities in a self-interested, biased, or one-sided manner that conflicts with or contradicts one or more general rules, laws, norms, or principles. (Wikipedia)
* willingness to act to benefit others
** taking actions for noble purposes
Musk certainly fits the bill for showing "eeaa," and those with excessive ego coupled with ambition often succeed in today's world of amassing financial wealth.
I agree with John Robertson's comment earlier about not conflating technical prowess with virtue, character, humanity, or any of the "C" words mentioned in my first sentence. Early on in medicine, I encountered physicians who were extremely brilliant, but their interactions with patients were a total non sequitur: they were passionless, cold, poorly communicative, and overtly uncaring. I have come across extremely "successful" physicians who never physically touched a patient. One told me not to get involved and have feelings towards my patients, and that I "need to learn the art of dispassionate enthusiasm." Another, a famous cardiologist, after bilking one of my cancer patients by ordering blatantly unnecessary tests in his office replied with "Dr. S, you don't know the name of the game."
What we have here is the difference between those who are both bright and technically skilled, but who also have an ethic or credo that involves humanity.
Musk has achieved notable things, but his sick ego, depravity, and underdeveloped personality have diminished those achievements. It is difficult to be both a gentle man and a scholar. Most people are easily taken in by the Musks and Trumps of this world. Not so many, in contrast, by the complete individuals. I have met many of the latter, and often they only gained appreciation late in life or after they had died.
In our political world today, names that come to mind are Bernie Sanders, Raphael Warnock, and perhaps most recently, Analilia Mejia. I add Mejia tentatively, but from what I have heard from her so far, she seems to me to be the kind of person I would want as POTUS, as well as the others I have noted. And all of those who we elect to offices that affect the way the world may evolve should be of similar character, with the utmost vetting done prior to any election.
Should we see Plato's republic as a discernible ancestor?
Musk lacks the virtues and aspirations of Plato's ideal leaders. Unfortunately, Plato and the other philosophers did not understand that everything is a network so they couldn't think of a better system that resembles the networks found in nature.
Perhaps Musk et al would benefit from reading Stephen Jay Gould's writing about the "non-overlapping magisteria" of religion and science, and reflect that perhaps software development and politics are similarly non-overlapping...
A couple of thoughts about a very insightful post.
Few things are more dangerous than a great strength that leads to great success. The confidence that persists through resistance and disappointments and that contributes to remarkable accomplishments is the "conjoined twin" with the arrogance that is blind to limitations, errors, and misapplications.
This is related to paradoxes of specialization. What is done effectively is at the cost of what is not. When a specialized life form is placed in a different environment/system (through change or "transplant"), the choices before that this species faces come down to "charge or die." In the case of a leader, the effects on the relevant systems are broad and deep.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is humbling. The more complex and undetermined a living system is, then the more likely that an "input" will produce an unexpected "output," which very well may be adverse.
This is not a counsel for inaction, which has its own unintended consequences. Rather, it provides reasons for caution, embracing diversity of ideas, a "big picture, long term" perspective, humility about the limits of what can be known and done. A keen sense of values and ethical-moral discernment also is indicated.