Ha! I first came across this verse (7.2) early in my career, circa 2001 or so, and it always stuck with me.
> 7.2
In the East there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It changes into a bird whose wings are like clouds filling the sky. When this bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters. This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with the blue sky at its back, returns home.
The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears its message. The Master Programmer continues to work at his terminal, unaware that the bird has come and gone.
That feels like kind of a dangerous advice. Seems to me that means that if Google announces that they want to roll out a full cencorship in China so that they can enter the market over there, the most prominent developers will just silently continue to work on it..?
I think the context of where this came from helps explain the quote (beginning of chapter 1 of Zhuangzi):
> IN THE NORTHERN DARKNESS there is a fish and his name is K'un.1 The K'un is so huge I don't know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P'eng. The back of the P'eng measures I don't know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky.
The big bird is so huge that it is alien to the smaller ecosystems below it. In the same way, CEOs and upper management are so "huge" (at the top of the hierarchy) that their choices seem incomprehensible from the point of e.g. a junior dev. Maybe they good or bad choices, but in any case their day-to-day choices are different from a single developer's.
> The cicada and the little dove laugh at this, saying, "When we make an effort and fly up, we can get as far as the elm or the sapanwood tree, but sometimes we don't make it and just fall down on the ground. Now how is anyone going to go ninety thousand li to the south!"
Here the small creatures make fun of the bird, not exactly understanding its world or experiences, but instead comparing the Peng's actions and natural inclinations to their own. A dove has no need to travel thousands of miles, which is a short trip for the Peng.
In the GP's comment, the novice programmer "stares in wonder at the bird" because - in the same way - his day-to-day experience is so different from the people who run Corporate Headquarters. The Master Programmer knows that CH is "doing it's thing" so to speak, or just following its own nature. Any attempt to understand the machinations and decisions of upper management from the viewpoint of a programmer simply doesn't work, so they do not bother to think about it.
Because the master can even hit the seagull with his Slingshot, that the Corp. H.Q. will not say anything to make him angry and make him think about the others H.Q.s that exist and make him wonder the salary there.
> 7.2
In the East there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It changes into a bird whose wings are like clouds filling the sky. When this bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters. This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with the blue sky at its back, returns home.
The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears its message. The Master Programmer continues to work at his terminal, unaware that the bird has come and gone.