Glue Engineering: Let's Name the Elephant
Glue work keeps teams aligned but stays invisible. CA makes it measurable by detecting language divergence across artifacts. Co-authored through continuous alignment—the piece demonstrates what it describes.
"AI Slop" is behind the paywall.
Or as Reed described it:
"The engineering"
Glue Engineering.
Glue work.
Being glue.
(Invisible unpaid emotional labor.)
The elephant has a name.
Let's talk about the elephant.
When Communication Breaks Down
Your team is a distributed system.
And language is the transport layer.
Simplest way to align a room?
Summarize your understanding at the end.
(People love to correct.)
Glue Engineering at work.
Alignment-as-a-Service.
(#GlueWork)
What happens, when the glue engineer leaves?
Meeting facilitation routines break down.
Documentation becomes write only.
Calendars begin to rot.
(Fragmentation in a nutshell.)
TL;DR: The glue engineer left the room.
When Glue Work Happens
Updating documentation.
Facilitating a retro.
In meetings.
And after.
Someone has to update the calendar.
Someone has to document a decision.
Someone has to write the meeting notes.
(Usually the same someones.)
When glue work happens.
Promotion leaves the room.
When promotion leaves the room.
The glue engineer leaves.
And alignment breaks.
(No more alignment labor.)
What if we could make this work legible?
Which career paths might emerge?
And how might the industry change?
TL;DR: Invisible emotional labor.
When Glue Becomes Legible
What is it that's breaking?
..
Culture?
Calendars?
Documentation?
(All of it?)
Teams are distributed systems.
Each actor has their own
local copy
of reality.
(Including AI actors.)
Glue work is alignment work.
Glue work keeps local copies
in sync.
(As good as it gets.)
Glue work is keeping the room calm
when production has an outage.
(And co-regulation becomes work.)
Glue work is asking the clarifying question,
while stakeholders are in the room.
(The one that clears things up.)
TL;DR: Aligning local copies of reality.
When Alignment Becomes Continuous
We have CI/CD.
Continuous integration.
Continuous delivery.
..
Glue engineering
is continuous alignment
in practice.
Glue engineering
is preventing legacy patterns
from encoding themselves
into the product.
Glue engineering
is designing systems
that respect
Conway's Law.
And CA.
Continuous alignment.
Is the tech that makes it legible.
TL;DR: Glue engineering becomes a practice.
When Language Becomes Aligned
Let's orient:
- Glue work is invisible alignment
and emotional labor work. - Glue engineering is the practice
of specializing in that field. - And continuous alignment
the tech that makes it legible.
Reed and me are building on top of the BEAM.
Actor system.
Hot code reloads.
Production hardened.
A distributed system.
To model a distributed system.
Tune in next time,
when we talk about why the BEAM
is the perfect fit
for continuous alignment.
Work with me.
Join the r/GlueEngineering subreddit.
Or sign up to get practice-oriented insight.
Cheers
Alex 🌈