The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#101

Post by oriolid » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #90

jl6 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the main difference would be that failure modes in CS tend to be binary - a piece of code produces the expected result or it doesn't. I think if you’re talking about CS and code you’re right - it’s a very pure and deterministic system. But if you consider software engineering at scale, you do get scenarios where failure states emerge in a gradual fashion, like the OP example of a worn mechanism. An example woul…

I guess my response to that would be that any change of platform - like scaling up, replication, etc - is an alteration of the environment, similar to changing the geometry of your car's wheels by changing their size, getting different shocks or raising/lowering it. Then you could expect failure states to emerge, but that's when you're looking for unpredictable behavior. I think I was just trying to make the point th…

Yes. The point is that software is not static. I work on mobile app that doesn't really have the scaling issue, but it's not that uncommon that a new OS update or phone model has new bugs that needs to be worked around or changes some undocumented behavior that the app accidentally depended on. It's not that difficult from mechanical wear.

In a previous job in early 2000s they did have some legacy software that was originally written for VAX/VMS and run on an emulator. Even that environment wasn't stable enough so they maintained some real VAX hardware just in case. And as far as I know, the hardware was physically breaking down.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#102

Post by nickt » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #5

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

People who work closely with machines develop an instinct for how it operates. If you think about it, all mechanical machines are state machines (in the CS sense) and if you’ve had to work with and fix shit long enough your brain commits those experiences to long term memory.

It reminds me of an old story - The Handyman’s Invoice

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#103

Post by derbOac » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #45

j7ake wrote: post #44

Diminishing returns on productivity is obvious (eg working 80 hours a week outputs productivity somewhere between 1 to 2 times the productivity of 40 hours a week). However, rewards for work is also highly nonlinear, and usually rank based. For example, Usain Bolt is not twice as fast as the second fastest runner but Bolt is rewarded many multiples more than the second fastest runner. What is rational is to think of…

Olympics is an extremely atypical competition. Cooperative culture amongst humans is why we are where we are technologically. Without the spirit of collaboration, we have no MRIs and modern medicine, no transistors and semiconductors, no airplanes and bridges. I wish HN wasn’t so damn depressing. Reading some of cynical stuff here is sometimes harmful for my own mental health.

FWIW, I'm not sure cynicism per se is the problem, or the only problem. It's a certain belief system and acceptance of certain assumptions as true because those justify certain outcomes.

The target essay could have stopped in the first couple of paragraphs and there would still be plenty of societal problems to discuss.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#104

Post by rusteh1 » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:48 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #40

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

There are startups today that automate this process with machine learning. They record the vibrations from your equipment and notify you when something changes or is likely to fail given historic patterns for similar equipment.

Not just startups[1]. AWS, among others I'm sure, have at least attempted to turn this man's intuition into a little yellow box and an algorithm. Scaling to many thousands of machines at once, instead of just the ones he happens to touch.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/monitron/

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#105

Post by wccrawford » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:48 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #46

Funny. I just had this conversation about ennui, probably not an original one, with a colleague who told me she wrote a thesis on ennui in college: Why did George Jetson go to work every day? Was it just to have a reason get away from his family? Wasn't the goal of that society that no one had to work, and everyone could be creative and leisureful all the time? Did George want to buy a newer robot? Was he cheating on…

I don't know many people like me, but I like putting things together. And I sometimes even like boring rote jobs where you do the same thing repeatedly.

In that future where we have UBI, not everyone will want to be an artist. Some will still want to just make things while following instructions. And there will likely be a beneficial place for it, even alongside all the robots.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#106

Post by samatman » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:51 AM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #31

pm90 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who work closely with machines develop an instinct for how it operates. If you think about it, all mechanical machines are state machines (in the CS sense) and if you’ve had to work with and fix shit long enough your brain commits those experiences to long term memory.

Or more likely state machines are a highly simplified view of reality... Working with machines is a combination of probabilities, intuitions, experience, chance... Most work with machines is not 1 or 0.

Analog state machines are the older kind. Examples: gearbox, ignition switch, Big Red Button. They don't follow or respect the laws of digital state machines, but are reasoned about in a broadly similar way.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#107

Post by nonrandomstring » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:53 AM UTC

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

My grandfather was a car mechanic after he come out the navy and always had a stethoscope in his tool-box. He'd listen around the engine before diagnosing crankshaft or valve maladies like some kind of auto-doctor. Come to think of it, machine listening techniques could be deployed in a modern mech-engineering to predict physical failures in advance given how easy it is to embed a piezo crystal and and TPU core.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#108

Post by samatman » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #76

bombcar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One I remember is knowing if Windows 95 was going to lockup and crash just by hearing the hard disk start to thrash - with SSDs swapping to death is silent. And with many of these the difference between a journeyman and a master is the journeyman is saying “it’s never done that” whilst the master is already running.

Macbooks are the worst, they don't even HDD led, or even "switched on" led!. Quite often, I can't tell if it's on already and coming back from sleep, or do I need to press "Power" button again. What a frustrating design.

I'm not sure I understand this complaint in detail?

If a Macbook is asleep, it will just wake up, you'll see the keyboard light, there is no need to press the power button.

If there is a need to press the power button it is because the machine is off. Don't worry, it will make a distinctive and iconic sound once it is not off and display, you guessed it, a white apple logo on the screen.

What circumstances lead to your confusion about its state? I can't relate!

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#109

Post by rightbyte » Sat, May 07, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #76

bombcar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One I remember is knowing if Windows 95 was going to lockup and crash just by hearing the hard disk start to thrash - with SSDs swapping to death is silent. And with many of these the difference between a journeyman and a master is the journeyman is saying “it’s never done that” whilst the master is already running.

Macbooks are the worst, they don't even HDD led, or even "switched on" led!. Quite often, I can't tell if it's on already and coming back from sleep, or do I need to press "Power" button again. What a frustrating design.

I was fighting the removal of temperature and RPM gauge on EV busses for this very reason. Obviously I was overruled.

You want to know what your stuff is doing and the reasoning behind the suggestion was litteraly "lets do it like Apple".

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#110

Post by goodpoint » Sat, May 07, 2022, 11:04 AM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #107

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

My grandfather was a car mechanic after he come out the navy and always had a stethoscope in his tool-box. He'd listen around the engine before diagnosing crankshaft or valve maladies like some kind of auto-doctor. Come to think of it, machine listening techniques could be deployed in a modern mech-engineering to predict physical failures in advance given how easy it is to embed a piezo crystal and and TPU core.

> machine listening techniques could be deployed in a modern mech-engineering to predict physical failures in advance

It has been done for decades.