What is 54?
Photo credit: Alex Gagareen via Unsplash
I didn’t set out to create a puzzle: I set out to create a way of recognising talented technical people.
When I was working for the UK Government, I saw that its Digital and Data profession suffered from the same problem as every other technical group working in a traditional organisation:
The organisation recruits talented technical people.
The talented technical people do good work.
People who do good work expect to advance their careers.
Career advancement means taking on management responsibility.
Talented technical people are not always talented managers.
EITHER talented technical people become mediocre managers
OR talented technical people seek career advancement elsewhere
OR (sometimes) they combine management and technical success.
One proven response to this problem is to create paths for talented technical people to achieve senior levels within their organisation, without having to take on management responsibility. This is not original: IBM created its Distinguished Engineer programme in the 1990s, and many people (including me) have copied it.
The hardest thing about setting up such a programme is not organising or administering it, but convincing the organisation that it should exist in the first place. There are many common objections.
First, such a programme challenges the policies and criteria used to assess roles and assign grades, salaries and other reward mechanisms. Those policies and criteria are usually based on overt signals of seniority, such as budget and headcount. Explaining why those measurements are counterproductive for senior technical contributors is difficult. Making the case that, in an age of digital transformation, measuring success and seniority by the size of a budget or the boxes on the org chart is counterproductive for any role is even more difficult.
Second, such a programme challenges the conceptions of achievement and worthwhile work held by existing senior managers, whose roles depend on headcount and budget. They often feel that their value is undermined by acknowledging people as peers who do not face the same challenges as them. It is necessary to show that different types of work can be just as challenging as each other, and have comparable impacts, even though those challenges and impacts are of different kinds.
Navigating these objections was not the puzzle; they’re just part of the work of making the case such a programme.
The puzzle arose when I was trying to come up with a catchy name for the scheme, so that I could refer to it without explaining it every time. Based on expert advice from people who had set up such schemes before, I estimated that the number of Distinguished Engineers for the UK public sector should be between fifty and sixty people. So I coined the term, ‘Club 54’.
I picked the number 54 for a specific reason, and jokingly suggested that a qualification for entry should be to determine that reason. For the next year or so, I gave the challenge to any group of technologists that I spoke to: explain why I picked 54, and you might be the sort of person who gets to be a Distinguished Engineer. The only clue is reflexive: that the reason I picked 54 is that it is appropriate for a club for talented technical people working in the UK public sector.
This challenge resulted in a lot of guesses, a lot of requests for clues, and a lot of tokens being burnt. (You can read about Chris Nesbitt-Smith's experience of attempting to solve the problem, first with AI, and then with human interaction here. Spoiler alert: AI nil, human interaction one.)
Eventually, a few people solved the riddle. I’m not in my government job any more, so theoretically have no reason to keep the solution a secret. However, I think it would be interesting to see whether anyone else can figure out the answer. If you would like to guess, submit a comment below. Comments are moderated, so I’ll only publish incorrect guesses, as well as news of when someone has got it right. If enough people get the answer, I may respond to Chris Nesbitt-Smith's challenge and organise a meeting.
I hope that a Distinguished Engineer scheme is established for Digital and Data people across the UK public sector: there are plenty of talented people who deserve the recognition. In the meantime, the door to Club 54 remains closed, unless you can figure out the key.
