When Systems Collide

I'm currently in New York this week on a work trip. I can't go into specifics, but what I can share is that we're going to lock more than 50 people in a room for three days to figure out the smartest way to extend a set of systems for future use cases. These systems are big, complex, and operate at a high scale worldwide. And it's not immediately clear how we should proceed. While I was preparing for all of this, I couldn't help but think about how cities are laid out and how that applies to the work in front of me.

The shortest distance between two points is usually a straight line, which is called the Euclidean distance. However, in Manhattan, where the work event is, the shortest route between two points is not the Euclidean distance because the city is laid out as a grid. Unless you are a bird, the shortest distance between point A and point B is called the Manhattan distance. This is the distance that you travel by only going straight or making 90-degree turns until you reach your…