I've had the recent opportunity to observe a post-COVID concerted attempt by tech leadership to reduce its company's costs, and it has been quite eye-opening. A common theme in employee chat spaces when discussing the changes is the whole boiling frog meme, but I think that a lot of people miss the deeper implications of what's actually going on.
Q: Why do you boil frogs in the first place?
A: You're making frog soup.
When you make frog soup, you can add in lots of other ingredients to change / disguise the taste, but inevitably you will need to have a certain amount of frog to attract customers. Yes, these customers will probably be French, and you'll have to deal with everything that comes along with that, but that is your customer base. Frog soup eaters, who pay you for the soup, want frogs in their soup.
Ah, but how many frogs will there be? You fill the tureen with lukewarm water, drop (say) 100 frogs into it, and turn on the gas cooker. Will you get a 100-frog soup? No!
- Some frogs will jump out of the tureen, just because they're interested in the wider world - the water temperature means nothing to them.
- Some frogs are sensitive to heat, and at the first warming sensation they'll try to escape.
- Once the activity becomes noticeable to the broader frog population, there will be general concern in the tureen, and some frogs will try to jump out just because they notice other frogs jumping out. Generally, you lose the healthiest frogs at this point. The old, sick frogs are stuck.
- You might try to drop additional frogs into the tureen to replace those lost. Unfortunately, word gets around the frog community fairly quickly, and the larger frogs will squirm out of your hands. You're left with the young frogs who don't know any better.
Eventually, the soup comes to the boil, and you're left with... substandard frog soup. Bon appetit!
