Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Efficiency Is the Enemy

fs.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 335 posts

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#161

Post by HWR_14 »

Laarlf wrote: post #132
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US are quite relaxed in comparison. This is basically a myth at this point, bolstered by how much more we complain about it. The US made the colossal mistake of trying to do regulation at the federal level, basically equivalent to doing it at the EU level, which the EU is now attempting to do more of and discovering what a trash fire it is. And one of the big reasons for that is that the more centrally the regu…

YES YES YES. Policies and laws should be more local to adhere to the local situations in local areas. A politician in Berlin cannot understand the situation in a random town with 500 inhabitants and therefore should rarely have something to say about how life functions there.

Do the needs of that town with 500 inhabitants require different streaming laws? Freedom to repair laws. Special export restrictions?

Should they be allowed to dump chemicals in the water we all share? Host servers that serve copyrighted material?

What needs do they have that evil laws are ignoring.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#162

Post by highfrequency »

mauvehaus wrote: post #41

And this is why you schedule flights in the morning: there's so damn little slack in the system that if things go wrong at 10:00 AM at O'Hare, flights for the whole rest of the day are screwed up owing to the cascading delays. At least in the morning the airlines have had the overnight to unsnarl the previous day's mess because of the reduced revenue traffic overnight and the corresponding slack that accrues as a hap…

The magnitude of the delayed flight effect is fairly small: flights at 3pm are only delayed by 10 mins more on average than 6am flights.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fly-early-arrive-on-tim...

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#163

Post by bckr »

_y5hn wrote: post #43
jrs235 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the MBAs have already done the [creative] thinking. They just want to throw the spec over the fence and have coders code it. /s

Your job is to make their wishful thinking the thundering success they deserve. To counter the original point, I find removing obstacles and latency-inducing loops helpful, to start seeing what the work really should be. Gaining efficiency through simplifying is a good thing, and can be creative too. The goal is not efficiency though.

> I find removing obstacles and latency-inducing loops helpful, to start seeing what the work really should be.

Should MBA's be studying DevOps?

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#164

Post by HWR_14 »

lordgrenville wrote: post #141
ryandrake wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? ?”

For me checkout with a cashier doesn't feel like less work though. I bring them my bag, take out each item, they scan them, and then I put them back in my bag. All they're doing is swiping! (Growing up we had disposable bags and human baggers, so maybe it saved a tiny bit more time.)

Good lord, you do all that with cashier? I load the stuff onto the belt (or don't even do that now thanks to COVID), and get a cart full of bagged groceries on the other side.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#165

Post by hinkley »

One of the uncomfortable conversations we're going to have to have soon is about how 'Flow State' is efficient but ineffective.

One of the characteristics of Flow State is a diminished sense of considering the consequences of an action. Exactly the "so busy figuring out if they could do it that they didn't stop to think if they should do it".

In particular I've noticed that people get extremely defensive about code they wrote in Flow State. My working theory is that we think somewhere on a spectrum from, "how could anything that made me feel that good really be bad?" to "I got three days of work done in one day you are crapping all over it instead of congratulating me? Fuck you!"

I know that the efficacy of my code tends to be higher when I 'come up for air', reason out what to do next, and if I find that Flow Me is disagreeing with Planning Me, I stop and regroup. This is essentially the same skill I use to, among other things, keep from overspending at a store - setting ground rules and stopping when I'm tempted to violate them.

Pomodoro might be a little to structured for many of us, but as a starting point it might be a reasonable antidote.

I think in general that programmers have an easier time entering Flow State, but if you're going to willingly exit it, you had better have some confidence you can find it again, so you need to have better than 50:50 odds of being able to enter it at will instead of just going with it when it happens. This seems to be a rarer skill.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#166

Post by _y5hn »

bckr wrote: post #163
_y5hn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your job is to make their wishful thinking the thundering success they deserve. To counter the original point, I find removing obstacles and latency-inducing loops helpful, to start seeing what the work really should be. Gaining efficiency through simplifying is a good thing, and can be creative too. The goal is not efficiency though.

> I find removing obstacles and latency-inducing loops helpful, to start seeing what the work really should be. Should MBA's be studying DevOps?

XOps.

It helps to ask around.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#167

Post by seniorThrowaway »

Laarlf wrote: post #131
enkid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The main alternative is noticing what went wrong over the last 70 or so years in the west and fixing that. You cannot escape the madness because globalisation made most countries very similiar. Growing the governments further and further did not help anyone but the biggest of companies. And because the chinese really don't care a lot about regulations or bureaucracy, they actually achieve something.

The difference is in China the corruption is more organized then it is in America.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#168

Post by _y5hn »

carbonguy wrote: post #67
_y5hn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your job is to make their wishful thinking the thundering success they deserve. To counter the original point, I find removing obstacles and latency-inducing loops helpful, to start seeing what the work really should be. Gaining efficiency through simplifying is a good thing, and can be creative too. The goal is not efficiency though.

I think you're on to something important here - the word "efficiency" is used to describe optimization in two different mental regimes: one, "how to meet a given quality of work with the minimum of friction/wastage" vs two, "how to perform the maximal work within a fixed resource allocation." They sound similar, which is probably why we use the word "efficiency" to describe improvements in both regimes, but the funda…

With both words, efficiency and effectiveness, intention is missing.

I'd rather people come up with their own ideas.

Re: Efficiency Is the Enemy

#169

Post by someguydave »

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…

Ideal customer service has both an api/app/webpage and a human to call for support.
Post reply on HN