Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#61

Post by jevgeni » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

stevebmark wrote: post #29

Could someone summarize this article? This article is condescending and very poorly written, I can't stand to try to finish it.

Here's a recap.

- The guy was a principal engineer at Mailchimp.

- Assumes he solved the problem of organizational complexity.

- Quotes the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy instead of any relevant operational or organizational research.

- Firms tend to ignore outside perspectives and examples. (which is often true)

- Assumes an organization is a distributed computational process. (it's not)

- Kant.

- The *amount* of work (i.e. work hours) a company can dish out grows linearly with headcount.

- Time for parallel tasks amortizes to zero if more resources are added. (no idea what this means...)

- Assumes organizations only write software.

- Assumes people know or care what "superlinear productivity" is.

- Assumes productivity = added value.

- Says that orgs should optimize for individual productivity.

- Queue theory and King's formula and hand-waving about contention

- Management consultants are bad at writing code.

- (I gave up after that)

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#62

Post by raydiatian » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

hansvm wrote: post #42

raydiatian wrote: post #39

Jesus Christ author, this isn’t the GRE. Use simpler fucking English.

"gets panicky" "agile or scrum or whatever" "most explanations ... are crap" "informs how much shit we can expect to fit in a bag" "the floor is lava" "chattier than others, ... communication is essential" "punt on coherence and just ride dirty" "put their eggs in a single basket" "blistering number of new products" "super weird hobbies" Scanning the essay, most of it is pretty tame. There are a few uncommon words in…

Everything about this article is just nonsense, from the (meaningless) title to the needless $40 words, to the made-up meta-meta-concepts that have zero practical use.

I could almost imagine the intolerable sniffles of Slavoj Zizek as I tried to read.

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#63

Post by raydiatian » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:05 AM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #48

hansvm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"gets panicky" "agile or scrum or whatever" "most explanations ... are crap" "informs how much shit we can expect to fit in a bag" "the floor is lava" "chattier than others, ... communication is essential" "punt on coherence and just ride dirty" "put their eggs in a single basket" "blistering number of new products" "super weird hobbies" Scanning the essay, most of it is pretty tame. There are a few uncommon words in…

In the very beginning, "emic" and "etic" are introduced (and defined in plain english inline). They are never used again. The author could have just used the plain english and got on with it.

Supervenience?

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#64

Post by caust1c » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

d0liver wrote: post #47

Humans are probably a lot more like plants than distributed computing systems. Everyone likes a different environment. We bear different kinds of fruit. You can't just uproot a person randomly and move them around and expect everything to be the same. We put roots out into every available nook and cranny, bending around each other to get what we need. Throwing a new person into the mix changes everything. Reasoning a…

I think you miss the point of the article a bit. I believe what he's getting at is this: there tends to arise bottlenecks in any growing organizations which prohibit them from moving as fast as every individual operating at full capacity, whatever that individual's capacity may be.

Intuitively, in smaller organizations these bottlenecks are fewer, and in an organization of 1, your individual capacity is only limited by your physical and mental constraints.

So yes, it's important to keep in mind that everyone's different but there is definitely excellent insight into how people work together effectively in large groups.

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#65

Post by boxed » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:22 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #24

Regardless of the content, it strikes me that this author is a bit stuck in his own head? He uses rare words when common ones will do ("dyad"? What's wrong with "pair"?), passingly mentions obscure terms for no reason, and in general writes like the less the reader understands, the smarter the material was.

Like how all tech blogs nowadays writes "leverage" instead of "use".

"I leveraged a hammer on these nails" sounds hilariously stupid, but it's quite literally using the word leverage for an action that has leverage, unlike tech blogs.

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#66

Post by trhoad » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:31 AM UTC

I must be stupid because I understood very little of this. The cynic in me says it sounds a lot like pseudo-intellectual-babble, but maybe I'm wrong.

I can pick out so many parts that seem to be an extremely odd take on things, but this one stood out:

> the total time spent communicating will grow quadratically as the work capacity of the organization grows linearly.

The assumption being that everybody needs to speak to everybody else as the organisation grows, which is a spectacularly daft assumption.

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#67

Post by underdeserver » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:43 AM UTC

aquova wrote: post #41

glenngillen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a term I wasn’t personally familiar with until a few months ago. But my introduction was via my 8 year old son! They were using it to explain concepts in class at school. Now I’m wondering if there’s some larger trend/influence that has introduced it into a collection vocabulary that I’ve missed?

"Force Dyad" was a plot point in Star Wars: Episode IX (2019), which I would imagine would be a noteworthy enough source.

Unless you refuse to acknowledge that that movie came out.

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#68

Post by 314 » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:54 AM UTC

raydiatian wrote: post #62

hansvm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"gets panicky" "agile or scrum or whatever" "most explanations ... are crap" "informs how much shit we can expect to fit in a bag" "the floor is lava" "chattier than others, ... communication is essential" "punt on coherence and just ride dirty" "put their eggs in a single basket" "blistering number of new products" "super weird hobbies" Scanning the essay, most of it is pretty tame. There are a few uncommon words in…

Everything about this article is just nonsense, from the (meaningless) title to the needless $40 words, to the made-up meta-meta-concepts that have zero practical use. I could almost imagine the intolerable sniffles of Slavoj Zizek as I tried to read.

Having read the essay the title is a pun on two different meanings of the word. Work - what people do, is actually just work - the theoretical capacity of a distributed system. This is roughly the point of his essay - treat the organisation of people as you would to optimise a distributed system.

On an unrelated note I see that inflation is hitting $5 words particularly hard :)

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#69

Post by 314 » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 7:59 AM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #48

hansvm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"gets panicky" "agile or scrum or whatever" "most explanations ... are crap" "informs how much shit we can expect to fit in a bag" "the floor is lava" "chattier than others, ... communication is essential" "punt on coherence and just ride dirty" "put their eggs in a single basket" "blistering number of new products" "super weird hobbies" Scanning the essay, most of it is pretty tame. There are a few uncommon words in…

In the very beginning, "emic" and "etic" are introduced (and defined in plain english inline). They are never used again. The author could have just used the plain english and got on with it.

Reading the definitions those two words do capture exactly what is being described, while plain english would be much more verbose to do the same. I had not encountered them before but they seem like useful words in this context.

Re: Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

#70

Post by taneq » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

boxed wrote: post #65

stavros wrote: post #24

Regardless of the content, it strikes me that this author is a bit stuck in his own head? He uses rare words when common ones will do ("dyad"? What's wrong with "pair"?), passingly mentions obscure terms for no reason, and in general writes like the less the reader understands, the smarter the material was.

Like how all tech blogs nowadays writes "leverage" instead of "use". "I leveraged a hammer on these nails" sounds hilariously stupid, but it's quite literally using the word leverage for an action that has leverage, unlike tech blogs.

Oh don’t be silly, you don’t just leverage a hammer… you leverage the synergy of your entire toolchain! ;)