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Efficiency Is the Enemy

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Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#91

Post by burnished »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #65
cogman10 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a balance. If 10 firefighters don't see high utilization, you don't want to increase the staff to 20, just in case. That's just a waste of money. The rule of thumb is that you want utilization to be where there is an acceptable latency depending on some percentile of cases. For a firefighter, you'd probably look at p99 latency. For a hamburger joint, p50 on order time would be good enough.

I doubt you will ever see even firefighters with low utilization. They can use extra time to do inspections to make sure there aren't any fires, or put on presentations at neighborhood association meetings teaching the public about fire hazards. If they aren't doing those things and there aren't any fires, they're just lazy.

Absolutely not. Not that those things aren't great, and hopefully already being done, but there is zero need to ask firefighters to be at 100% utilization at all times. There is value in having some one perform busy waiting in the event of an emergency. Did you know thats a training drill they perform? How fast they can be out and on their way from the moment of getting a call.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#93

Post by rcfaj7obqrkayhn »

allenu wrote: post #79

Something that I've noticed recently is that in my work life, I'm finding there's more bureaucracy in what I do, mostly in the name of "efficiency". When you encounter a problem to solve, there's often a process already defined that is most efficient (or at least thought to be most efficient), when accomplishing tasks, there's a pre-defined way of laying out the tasks (i.e. tickets), updating them, reviewing them, an…

also feel like these processes are there so when the crap hits the fan, there's a trail to see whom to point the fingers at. everyone is just trying to cover their own butts

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#94

Post by bluGill »

Efficient is very important when you are doing the same thing over and over again. If you job is to type, than the faster you type the better, and anything that gets in the way of typing is bad. If you job is to think, than the faster you think the better, anything that slows thinking is bad. If you are a programmer or manager, then you are in the later group. If you work an assembly line than it is the former.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#95

Post by Aperocky »

enkid wrote: post #89
Laarlf wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overregulation and bureaucracy are the downfall of the west. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we can fix it.

What does this mean? I'm pretty sure the main alternative- China - is both over regulated and is very bureaucratic.

> China - is both over regulated and is very bureaucratic.

It's complicated, but that's not a correct assessment.

China is not very much regulated at all - a regulation must be regular, but the enforcement of rules in China is anything but regular.

On one side, you have the wild west (east?) of unregulated capitalism, on the other side, you have the Party coming down with the hammer over things it doesn't like, The bureaucracy mainly serves the latter.

Obviously, this is recognized as a problem, rule of law has been the drive for years but the system cannot and does not change over a day.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#96

Post by jfengel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
seem_2211 wrote: post #31

We've replaced secretaries with software, and now we have people making $150k+ a year busy working on things that they should be paying someone $40k a year to handle.

And the same happened to everyone else too, just with smaller dollar amounts. During my high school and early university years, I was in love with the concept of being able to run errands over the Internet. Why go to the bank when I can order a transfer on-line? Why make orders over the phone when I can choose what I want on a webpage with few clicks? Why ask anyone to do anything, when I could just click or type my…

To me, the web page nearly is always faster than asking a human. Even setting aside the phone trees designed to slow me down, I'm more comfortable with the bloated, user-hostile page than trying to understand a human voice through a 4000 Hz telephone channel. I like not having to try to explain to them what I want. With the web I can do it whenever I want, at my own pace.

It feels like a voice call is an admission of failure: sometimes of their web interface design, sometimes of my ability to read. If I am calling on the phone it's only because I want to talk to a human being, and I want that disgusting process over with as soon as possible.

There is never anything I want from the phone tree except a human operator. If you could automate my request then you should have done it over the far clearer interface of the web page. Maybe there are some people who have a phone but not a computer, but I am not one of them. I'm only talking to you because the easier (for me) ways have failed.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#97

Post by dsr_ »

seem_2211 wrote: post #72
TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the same happened to everyone else too, just with smaller dollar amounts. During my high school and early university years, I was in love with the concept of being able to run errands over the Internet. Why go to the bank when I can order a transfer on-line? Why make orders over the phone when I can choose what I want on a webpage with few clicks? Why ask anyone to do anything, when I could just click or type my…

Phoning for anything is my favorite thing. Absolutely I want to talk to customer service. No I don’t want this automated (especially when I’m trying to get myself a slightly better deal). And I hate phone trees with a passion, just get me the operator now.

Phoning is my least favorite thing (well, except for in-person visits), but I also want a human on the other end of the line when I call. If I'm calling, it means I couldn't get the website to do the right thing for me.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#98

Post by redisman »

I like the analog of the sliding puzzle because also if you remove one more piece it will be even easier to solve. Also if you remove too many pieces then you’re not actually getting meaningful work done.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#99

Post by ryandrake »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
seem_2211 wrote: post #31

We've replaced secretaries with software, and now we have people making $150k+ a year busy working on things that they should be paying someone $40k a year to handle.

And the same happened to everyone else too, just with smaller dollar amounts. During my high school and early university years, I was in love with the concept of being able to run errands over the Internet. Why go to the bank when I can order a transfer on-line? Why make orders over the phone when I can choose what I want on a webpage with few clicks? Why ask anyone to do anything, when I could just click or type my…

Same with self checkout at the grocery store: I know a lot of people like it, but whenever I do it I’m thinking “this is someone else’s job! Why the hell am I having to do it now? ?”

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#100

Post by Florin_Andrei »

feoren wrote: post #49

If it's true that "Slack represents operational capacity sacrificed in the interests of long-term health", then who exactly is the target audience of this article? Corporations have not cared about "long-term health" since the 80s. CEOs and CXOs and CYOs and Senior Vice Presidents play musical chairs both within and between companies in a neo-feudalistic Game-of-Thrones-style competition for titles, where companies a…

I think the point of the article is this:

If people are like CPUs - if all CPUs are busy 100% all the time, then latency, as we all know, sucks, and processes may crash occasionally. You want decent latency, and avoid crashes, then keep the CPU usage below the ceiling level.

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