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Where has all the productivity gone?

johndcook.com

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Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #10

I think people are doing more work than ever, but that doesn't mean the work is useful. Think about how much easier it is to build a SaaS or something vs. even just ten years ago, but that doesn't mean that the new stuff being built will bring economic value. In fact we might expect there to be diminishing returns in terms of what delivers real utility and thus improvements in productivity don't translate to a simila…

Everyone churning out Tiktok, Clubhouse, and Robinhood while we need more SpaceX and Teslas. I’m unsure how to tilt the equation so solving for hard (necessary) engineering is more profitable (or lower risk) than window dressing.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#12

Post by robjan »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #7
robjan wrote: post #2

There is a huge assumption here that productivity isn't increasing, which is false. Economic output per hour worked has been steadily increasing in every country since their respective industrial revolutions. When you go to the source tweet, it turns out that it's comparing the developed world to the developing world. Developing economies will always grow faster, but not necessarily efficiently, because there's more…

> These low hanging fruit can be picked by throwing more people at the problem (increasing workforce participation or working longer hours). I haven't read the article yet, but note increasing workforce participation or working hours doesn't increase productivity - that just increases the denominator for the productivity calculation, and unless it increases the numerator faster there is no productivity increase.

This is why I said "not necessarily efficiently". At a very macro level, you can increase economic output by either working more or increasing efficiency (productivity per hour).

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#14

Post by bob33212 »

In 2007 I ran an automated testing team for a product that had 60M in revenue. It was just me by myself. Today you can find startups with less than 5M in revenue with 5 people with the same productivity. Organizations have expanded to fill the budget provided of them mostly through headcount. Similar to Conway's Law.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#15

Post by alexgmcm »

robjan wrote: post #2

There is a huge assumption here that productivity isn't increasing, which is false. Economic output per hour worked has been steadily increasing in every country since their respective industrial revolutions. When you go to the source tweet, it turns out that it's comparing the developed world to the developing world. Developing economies will always grow faster, but not necessarily efficiently, because there's more…

I think the tweet linked to by OP is using the colloquial definition of productivity (i.e. I can get more stuff done) and uses examples of computer technology etc.

This isn't to be confused with the economic definition of GDP per hour worked - which has far more to do with the sectors of industry that a country has.

After all, a few financiers doing million-dollar deals is always going to generate more GDP per hour than coltan miners, even though it's not obvious which is actually generating more wealth. Robert F Kennedy famously said the GNP "measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile".

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#16

Post by alexgmcm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #10

I think people are doing more work than ever, but that doesn't mean the work is useful. Think about how much easier it is to build a SaaS or something vs. even just ten years ago, but that doesn't mean that the new stuff being built will bring economic value. In fact we might expect there to be diminishing returns in terms of what delivers real utility and thus improvements in productivity don't translate to a simila…

Everyone churning out Tiktok, Clubhouse, and Robinhood while we need more SpaceX and Teslas. I’m unsure how to tilt the equation so solving for hard (necessary) engineering is more profitable (or lower risk) than window dressing.

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” – Jeff Hammerbacher

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#17

Post by xondono »

falsaberN1 wrote: post #9

I find it hard to agree with the article. With the escalation of technology the amount of things I get done every day, like, tangible, countable things, has skyrocketed, even more as my education with that technology went up. Not just programming and admin stuff, that includes stuff like art (cheaper, takes less time, gets nicer results) which some people argued would never ever be a replacement for traditional art (…

> Most of my computer tasks are automated via scripts and homebrewn programs. Maybe I'm some sort of rare example of the third point in the article ("The productivity is here, it’s just only harnessed by the indistractable few."), but I doubt I'm special in any way. It's not like the past had no distractions, and I'd argue distractions in the past were harder to dismiss (having to personally travel to X place to do Y paperwork instead of resolving that with a quick phone call or digital process).

This makes you a rare example. I’ve been saying for years that the real computer revolution will happen when people work with computers, rather than on computers.

Most of the workforce does the same things they did on paper but on a screen. For example, I’ve seen people fill out spreadsheets manually, with a calculator.

A lot of jobs have not seen the speedup of automation, while compliance costs keep growing.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#18

Post by boomka »

the article is a bit weird, I think it refers to productivity paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

But it is a well studied topic, with much more than 5 possible explanations offered for it.

I personally think the whole thing is a bit of a nothingburger that comes about as a simple consequence of how we measure productivity, which is via measuring how much money is paid to people. And since monetory / fiscal policy more or less ensures that all the people are always paid something for something, productivity growth is manifested as invention of new service industries, from personal trainers to dietologists. In other words, our productivity metrics mostly measure hours worked.

Better metric would be how many hours worked it takes to produce a ton of nickel, or a bushel of corn, or a typical family car. And those number have been going down consistently, suggestive of strong productivity growth and no paradox.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#19

Post by fhssn1 »

'Why aren't we far more productive?' sounds not too different from 'Why don't we have infinite growth on a finite planet?'

- There is not enough meaningful democratizable work. Most work is either menial, or challenging. And I'm not even talking about the third kind of work [1].

- Menial work is getting more and more automated.

- Challenging work doesn't necessarily scale with human resources beyond a certain point (e.g., If 1000 researchers are already working on cancer, increasing the number to 10,000 isn't necessarily going to help find a cure faster).

[1] https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#20

Post by wussboy »

boomka wrote: post #18

the article is a bit weird, I think it refers to productivity paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox But it is a well studied topic, with much more than 5 possible explanations offered for it. I personally think the whole thing is a bit of a nothingburger that comes about as a simple consequence of how we measure productivity, which is via measuring how much money is paid to people. And since mon…

Do you have links or suggestions for stats about “hours worked per bushel of grain etc.”? I’m interested in this area.
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