When I was 21 and just barely able to get into bars legally, I would head to Café du Nord for salsa and swing lessons with The Fabulous Juan. He always stressed that “there is no man, there is no woman … but there is always a leader and a follower.” You can decide for any dance, but make sure you know who is which. This is choreography.
When I was first learning to live with my family partner, we had to work out our kitchen dance. The kitchen dance is how you move through the kitchen, with each other, around each other, up against each other…. Not every dance requires a leader and a follower; it turns out that ours most certainly did. Some days she was the chef and some days it was me. It only worked when we knew who was which.
When it comes to technology and orchestrating databases, I like the leader–follower paradigm because there isn’t an implicit hierarchy, just an order to things. I mean, you could think of followers as subordinate to a leader, but I don’t happen to. Leaders and followers take turns (and followers always have a choice).
I hadn’t considered the significance of word choice and technology until it were pointed out by my colleagues at Pivotal. Thank you Tim Garrity and others for reminding me that bad word choices made out of historical defaults tend to “alienate teammates and potential new hires.”
