When you say "scalable," I hear "I don't value your work"

It's completely natural. When a particular process within a business expands rapidly, the business tries to reduce or eliminate the most human-resource-intensive aspects of that expanding business. Because if a process takes individual attention from smart, well trained humans, that shit be way expensive, yo.

So, businesses cut corners. They replace individual attention with standardized processes that can be handled more quickly, handled by computers, or outsourced to Mumbai.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it's my job to make it work, and I'm not too bad at my job.

But more often it fails, and things just don't run as well as they ought to.

If the business is, say, a huge computer and mobile device manufacturer, failure to scale just isn't that bad. Maybe some customers are upset. Maybe the bottom line loses a couple percents of a percent of a percent from last quarter's billions.

But if the business in question is a bank, and the process in question is signing a legal affidavit about a foreclosure, failure can equal a miscarriage of justice. And if it's as widespread as this MoJo article suggests, it could also be another blow to our fragile economy.

img: Mr. Burns, by Johnny Tirita