Support stopped routing through me
Guys, a client reported this. I was the human router between support and engineering. Removing the bridge ended the ticket ping-pong: report → engineer → agent → fixed → client.
Guys, the client says something's not working. For years, that message was me — forwarding, tagging an engineer, chasing status, translating between support and engineering.
I was the human router. Support talked to me, I talked to engineering, engineering reported back to me, I reported back to the client. Four hops for every bug.
Routers add latency
None of those hops added judgment. They added waiting. Every bridge person in a workflow is a queue — work piles up behind their availability. I had already lived this with the PRD, the design, and the review. Support was the same disease in another organ.
A bridge between two teams is a queue with a face.
The loop now
The client reports. The engineer reads it, understands what's needed, and sends an agent to implement the fix. The engineer verifies, then tells the client it's done. End of ticket.
No relay. No tagging. No status meetings about status. I find out about most fixes after they shipped — which is exactly the point.
What made it safe is everything from the earlier chapters: the context an engineer needs no longer lives in my head, review has a system, and the person who ships is the person on call.
End of act one
That was the fourth loop: product definition, design, review, support. The pattern is the same every time — the knowledge leaves your head, the judgment stays with the team, and things stop waiting for you.
Which raises the real question: where did all that knowledge actually go? That's the next chapter.
Founder question: count the bridges in your company — people whose main job is moving information between two groups. Each one is a place where work waits.