Earlier quoted context omitted.
But AI agents will solve this! /s
Why the sarcasm?
Because they're just another layer of self serving computer bullshit.
The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#42Not sure if its a sufficient explanation, but I like what I've heard from Cal Newport about this. More and more self-service IT systems were able to replace a lot of jobs. But the result is that now you are responsible for doing things via IT systems that were previously outsourced to somebody else. E.g., you're booking your own travel instead of using a travel agent. In some sense, things are more efficient because…
I had some extremely bad experiences with information architects early in my career and came to think that architecture is a responsibility not a job title. I feel like instead of replacing travel companies we should have condensed agency job titles into responsibilities where one person does the work of three, and instead of doing away with agencies, have people specialize in a region, so you’re booked near the activities you enjoy.
My ex was good at working airline ticket price periodicity and hotel bookings. We were at an age where all our younger friends were getting married and rather than buying them a wedding present, she would save them $500-1000 on their honeymoon instead. She probably should have been consulting for second-gen travel websites on how to systematize it. But now I think we should have kept the human.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#43Bringing in IT is a form of optimization. Optimization needs to speed up hot spots. If you make something 1000X faster, but it only took 1% of the overall time in the system, then the gain is around 1%.
When you bring in IT, there are inefficiencies. Things that were done without IT have to be done with IT, so there are steps to prepare the input for the machines, and manage the information, and keep backups and all the rest. Some of those activities are new, not replacing another process. Or not replacing it with something less time consuming.
A clerk armed with a room full of filing cabinets won't necessarily be able to handle that many more requests in a day, if that is replaced by a terminal and database. Suppose that during the average request, he has to spend 7 minutes talking with someone on the phone, of which one minute is spent with the filing cabinets. If we replace that minute with 30 seconds of working with the terminal and database, maybe that will go to 6.5 minutes. Or not. If the cabinet or database shuffling is done in parallel with chatting on the phone, it may make hardly any difference at all to the duration of the service episode.
You will not get anywhere near the theoretical gains from technology, with its blinding speed, until all the human steps are replaced. If there is a "for each request x do ..." loop in the operation, and each iterations has steps done by a human, you will not speed it up until you get rid of those steps. But at that point, the efficiency gain will no longer be attributed to a working human as productivity increase.
For instance, there is no question that the web has greatly increased the productivity of corporations in many customer service areas. The farm of servers works unattended, serving up all sorts of information to the users. Thousands of concurrent users. It does something that was impossible prior to the advent of the internet. Because no humans are actually sitting there serving the web requests, there is no human productivity measure.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#44Not sure if its a sufficient explanation, but I like what I've heard from Cal Newport about this. More and more self-service IT systems were able to replace a lot of jobs. But the result is that now you are responsible for doing things via IT systems that were previously outsourced to somebody else. E.g., you're booking your own travel instead of using a travel agent. In some sense, things are more efficient because…
I feel this even in my profession as software engineer. It used to be that I could focus on writing good software. Studying the domain, finding abstractions, picking the best language/approach for the problem at hand, designing domain models... Over time the expectations on developers have become greater. We're software builders, and testers. A lot of us have trained to become UNIX/windows/network/infrastructure engineers, often across multiple cloud environments. We're DBA's across multiple relational and NoSQL DB's. We're designers who need to understand the intricacies of accessibility. We're business experts too. And taking on all of these things has made us less focused. Less capable at our core jobs.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#45Sometimes in software it's a problem that once a solution is encoded in software by an external party, innovation stops. People inside the company with domain knowledge and who work with the tool daily cannot contribute anymore.
This is insightful. Software is forcing a sub-optimal process which cannot be improved onto a company.
This basically the idea around Paul Grahams “Beating the averages” essay which is about 23 years old now.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#46I think a lot of this is down to too much choice. There are many papers on this in psychology, but for example, from [1]: "Findings from 3 experimental studies starkly challenge this implicit assumption that having more choices is necessarily more intrinsically motivating than having fewer. These experiments, which were conducted in both field and laboratory settings, show that people are more likely to purchase gour…
Have you tried sorting a list of names by hand? Once it reaches a certain size, it’s nearly impossible.
Also, ballistics. Modeling/simulation. Data storage and retrieval (think DMV, social security, IRS, banking).
CNC machining and general manufacturing/design.
If you think computers have not dramatically improved nearly every major field of endeavor you interact with, it’s because you were born after they’d already made many major improvements. Or at just ignorant.
For instance, it’s still entirely possible to do manual machining and drafting, but there are very very few situations where it makes sense. Hobbiest and one off jobs, mostly.
Are there areas where they aren’t really helping? Sure.
But they are outnumbered by dozens of ways they are.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#47Paperwork is probably similar. Generally reduces productivity for the individual contributors. But reduces the principal agent problem.
Good point. Paper, like computers, is generally being used to track all the goings on at a company. Tracking clearly takes up an enormous amount of time, with questionable benefit.
Questionable benefit until things go wrong, anyway.
Or when you consider the alternative.
Filing expense reports certainly sucks, after all.
Allowing everyone in the company to spend money without tracking or justifying it? Yikes.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point. Paper, like computers, is generally being used to track all the goings on at a company. Tracking clearly takes up an enormous amount of time, with questionable benefit.
Questionable benefit until things go wrong, anyway. Or when you consider the alternative. Filing expense reports certainly sucks, after all. Allowing everyone in the company to spend money without tracking or justifying it? Yikes.
Yep, I was a little lazy there. The benefit is questionable as far as productivity is concerned. As the comment above said, it does reduce the principal agent problem.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is insightful. Software is forcing a sub-optimal process which cannot be improved onto a company.
This basically the idea around Paul Grahams “Beating the averages” essay which is about 23 years old now.
I don't see that. Seems like different issues.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#50I think a lot of this is down to too much choice. There are many papers on this in psychology, but for example, from [1]: "Findings from 3 experimental studies starkly challenge this implicit assumption that having more choices is necessarily more intrinsically motivating than having fewer. These experiments, which were conducted in both field and laboratory settings, show that people are more likely to purchase gour…
I can't agree. While computers of course have a ton of shortcomings and difficulties, they allowed easy access to and sharing of information. Collaboration has become much, much easier. To say nothing of plain communication, by text, voice, of video calls. If you think computes suck, try going 50 years back and do a long-distance call (and then pay the bill). The same thing immensely powered commerce, both online sto…
I wonder if anything you said was actually a good thing. It seems more like a list of horrible things in disguise:
* Easy access to information: perhaps that makes us ignore the most important information right in front of our faces?
* Easy communication: perhaps that has made destroying communities easier (just move away, I can still call you!)
* Online stores:... too much consumerism!