In the UK we have been debating building 1 more runway at 1 airport for about 50 years and still it’s not settled. Meanwhile China has built several entire islands in the ocean and put airports on them.
Fast
51–60 of 306 posts
Re: Fast
#52For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. The 6 years of construction was really a bus lane + major sewer infrastructure project. Which brings up another reason why some of these projects were Fast -- they operated in places where there there wasn't existing infrastructure or residents to…
I can't comment on the bus line example, but the New York Times had a great write-up ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... ) about subway building in New York. At least in New York there's a lot more going on than the reasons you point out. Particularly damning is the fact that Paris is successfully building subways at a 10th of the cost in far less time despite having even more constraint…
Yeah, this is a much better example and reflection of how weakened institutions and process can drive up costs.
Re: Fast
#53This may be one of the best (worst) examples of how bad things are today. The California High-Speed Rail was funded over 15 years ago and they haven't begun building it yet. They are 82% of the way through their environmental studies.
Re: Fast
#54Having worked at a top 5 big tech company from college hire to a high level position, I have seen many factors that contribute to things being much slower than a startup. Some of them might be valid, but others are just the result of tragedy of large organisations (a big tech company is surprisingly similar to governments in terms of internal bureaucracy). * Large number of people and orgs willing and fighting to tak…
> a big tech company is surprisingly similar to governments in terms of internal bureaucracy
Underrated point. It didn't really sink in for me until I saw the numbers with my own eyes.
From a quick DDG search of publicly available info, here's [1] the numbers for FAANG headcount as of the end of 2022:
- Meta: 86,000
- Apple: 164,000
- Amazon: 1,541,000
- Netflix: 12,800
- Google: 190,000
[1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform... (all companies' numbers slightly rounded for easy reading)
Re: Fast
#55For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. The 6 years of construction was really a bus lane + major sewer infrastructure project. Which brings up another reason why some of these projects were Fast -- they operated in places where there there wasn't existing infrastructure or residents to…
Thats the story, but everyone who transited Van Ness during that time saw the same thing - very little work actually being done. The equipment just sat there idle most of the time. A more efficient process could have come in and finished the work,
block by block in far less time if they actually, y'know, worked on it. People in construction tell me that it's because they're always waiting on the other guy to finish their job before they can do theirs. Where's the Gantt chart for Van Ness? Where's the accountability?
Re: Fast
#56For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. The 6 years of construction was really a bus lane + major sewer infrastructure project. Which brings up another reason why some of these projects were Fast -- they operated in places where there there wasn't existing infrastructure or residents to…
Lots of things happened fast during WWII. One of the big reasons, was that regulatory hurdles were removed. The result: Long Island is one big Superfund site, and our cancer rates are through the roof . I know of at least six women, in my immediate orbit, that are currently being, or have recently been, treated for breast cancer. Before I moved here, thirty-two years ago, I had never met anyone that had cancer. Since…
Not to knock the success of git, or the amazing effort under pressure, but the cohesiveness / understandability could be better.
Re: Fast
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of things happened fast during WWII. One of the big reasons, was that regulatory hurdles were removed. The result: Long Island is one big Superfund site, and our cancer rates are through the roof . I know of at least six women, in my immediate orbit, that are currently being, or have recently been, treated for breast cancer. Before I moved here, thirty-two years ago, I had never met anyone that had cancer. Since…
Not to knock the success of git, or the amazing effort under pressure, but the cohesiveness / understandability could be better.
That's a good point.
But Git was initially written by one cranky Finn, in ten days.
It totally changed the way we all work.
Re: Fast
#58Very interesting thing(maybe sample representativeness) is that there aren't any "fast" things from the 2010-2020 decade. Does anyone have anything impressive in mind? Personally can't think of anything myself.
The entire ride-sharing/delivery/logistics space was moving ridiculously fast during that time. Remember those photos of thousands of multicolored bicycles abandoned in fields? Or the scooters being yeeted into the ocean, global riots from taxi drivers, the collapse of the taxi medallion market, regulatory debates in every city/state/country, billions of VC money raised in weeks (or days), the Darwinian M&A scene as…
Even though this in the long run may have burned more money than it yielded, I think this also represented a pretty landmark shift in how people saw computers (including smartphones). They were no longer just devices for surfing the web or messaging. Between this, and the rise of Amazon/online shopping, computers were now ways to actuate the world
Re: Fast
#59Apollo 8 is not a very good example; it's not like the hardware pipeline wasn't well on its way to be ready to go by the time the decision was made.
Don't get me wrong, Apollo 8 was an extremely risky and critical part of the program, but it's not like somebody conjured everything up from thin air in 134 days.
Re: Fast
#60For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. The 6 years of construction was really a bus lane + major sewer infrastructure project. Which brings up another reason why some of these projects were Fast -- they operated in places where there there wasn't existing infrastructure or residents to…
Sure, complications happened. But how efficiently was each day, each hour, used to solve these problems.