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The Value of Time

jackg.org

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Re: The Value of Time

#51

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

sageikosa wrote: post #43
Radim wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off-topic: I had ramen a few times in Japan, and while truly delicious, it's massively expensive and rather exotic. Why is ramen a synonym for "cheap" in the US (apparently)? Or does it mean just "instant noodles" over there?

The US of A has a greater capacity to produce grains needed to produce the noodles, and can deliver them to market without having to put them on a boat. Japan has less arable land, so less grain producing land, and (probably) has to import more (which requires boats).

> The US of A has a greater capacity to produce grains needed to produce the noodles

And more importantly, a greater capacity to subsdize production of said grains.

Edit: Did this comment really get greyed out? The mechanism for that is still kind of mysterious to me. Let me clarify, I don't mean the US has more money, just a dumber system of farm subsidies.

Re: The Value of Time

#52

Post by slantyyz »

jmduke wrote: post #13

I find it frustrating that many tech people (sorry for being general, but I see it a lot on this site and other communities) have a general sense of disdain for MBA/BBA-educated individuals, and then write multi-paragraph blog posts about opportunity cost, which is a 101 concept in any economics or business curriculum. I'm not trying to derisive of Jack -- it's a good post -- but this is not some grand insight. This…

> I find it frustrating that many tech people (sorry for being general, but I see it a lot on this site and other communities) have a general sense of disdain for MBA/BBA-educated individuals

Speaking as an MBA, the problem isn't so much the education itself as it is the types of individuals MBA programs attract.

Many of those people are just looking for ways to bump up their base salary. Many don't "take away" any real knowledge, because the program is just a means to an end. In my MBA program, there were plenty of greedy and fake people, and it's no surprise to me that people with MBAs garner so much disdain.

Re: The Value of Time

#53

Post by corin_ »

ricardobeat wrote: post #23

I think this is taking the value of time concept way too far. So if an employee spends 15 minutes in the toilet he's pulling down the company's future value? Feeling entitled to favors from others (whose time is 'less valuable') is just a peek into where this line of thought heads. Anyway, I'm not wasting my time discussing this [$640 blog post].

> So if an employee spends 15 minutes in the toilet he's pulling down the company's future value?

Yes, he is. The way to realise that is to ask what would happen if everyone in the company did that, and did it not for 15 minutes but for 8 hours a day.

Sure, 15 minutes may not make a huge difference - but it's like saying "chucking a penny into the rubbish isn't losing me money", it may not be losing you enough to be worth caring about, but technically yes it is.

Re: The Value of Time

#54

Post by slantyyz »

btilly wrote: post #15
calinet6 wrote: post #12

This is an excellent thought process, and it's good to know about opportunity cost. Once you do, internalize it, and pack it away so it can never see the light. As soon as you start treating people as the equivalent of the monetary value of their time, you're lost. You've gone too far. This way of thinking is powerful and dark. Please—use in moderation.

Indeed. I know a company that made the mistake of putting an MBA type in charge of advertising, and therefore in charge of their affiliate program. She pushed always trying to figure out how much an affiliate was worth, before deciding if their stupid questions were worth the time that it took to answer them. She made two fundamental mistakes. The first is that the time it takes to figure out up front whether someone…

The "MBA type" is probably an idiot, or an idiot with an MBA. But it's not the MBA itself that makes a person an idiot.

Re: The Value of Time

#55

Post by stcredzero »

> Once you start thinking like this, your day becomes full of these tradeoffs. Today I had to buy computer for a new employee [5]. I went to Amazon, my go-to online store, and immediately found what I was looking for listed at $700. Based on previous experience, I know that Amazon isn’t usually the cheapest option for laptops; I estimated that if I spent another fifteen minutes diligently searching the web, the expected value of the best price I’d find would be $660. At that moment I was estimated my rate of value creation at over $160/hr, so I bought the Amazon computer and moved on to the next item on my to-do list.

I wonder if Amazon does this when they price items like computers?

Re: The Value of Time

#56

Post by calinet6 »

slantyyz wrote: post #54
btilly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I know a company that made the mistake of putting an MBA type in charge of advertising, and therefore in charge of their affiliate program. She pushed always trying to figure out how much an affiliate was worth, before deciding if their stupid questions were worth the time that it took to answer them. She made two fundamental mistakes. The first is that the time it takes to figure out up front whether someone…

The "MBA type" is probably an idiot, or an idiot with an MBA. But it's not the MBA itself that makes a person an idiot.

An MBA teaches you a lot of important facts about business and how to run it. There's nothing inherently wrong about an MBA.

I believe there is, however, a striking tendency in those who seek it to be searching for the wrong path to success.

Re: The Value of Time

#57

Post by slantyyz »

calinet6 wrote: post #56
slantyyz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "MBA type" is probably an idiot, or an idiot with an MBA. But it's not the MBA itself that makes a person an idiot.

An MBA teaches you a lot of important facts about business and how to run it. There's nothing inherently wrong about an MBA. I believe there is, however, a striking tendency in those who seek it to be searching for the wrong path to success.

Don't know if anything has changed in the 20 years since I got my MBA, but "An MBA teaches you a lot of important facts about business and how to run it." is maybe only 60% true.

You learn a lot of theories and do a lot of case studies, but the "how" part is definitely lacking.

You are right about the types of people who enter MBA programs. I couldn't stand most of my peers. A lot of them were all about greed and status.

Re: The Value of Time

#58

Post by btilly »

msellout wrote: post #48
btilly wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be my main point. There are a lot of hidden sources of value which are hard to quantify when it comes to anything like customer service. Therefore the errors that she was making are likely to be systemic in anyone who is trying to be economically efficient.

And even more likely to be systemic in anyone who is not trying to measure the world. Science works.

Actually not. People who do not try to measure what is going on make an entirely different set of systemic errors.

Which set of errors matters more depends on what you're doing. For anything resembling quality customer service, measuring tends to lead to the worse errors. But a CFO who does not reflexively try to measure stuff would be a disaster.

Re: The Value of Time

#59

Post by jw_ »

Radim wrote: post #28
gfodor wrote: post #25

While most of the comments here are talking about the fact that this is the posters "discovery" of opportunity cost, there's another point to be made here. There are several reasons why, as a startup founder, getting that $660 laptop instead of the $700 one benefits your company other than the $40 that stays in your bank account. Frugality breeds more frugality: if you set an example, others will follow and compound…

Slightly off-topic: I had ramen a few times in Japan, and while truly delicious, it's massively expensive and rather exotic. Why is ramen a synonym for "cheap" in the US (apparently)? Or does it mean just "instant noodles" over there?

Ramen in the US refers to instant dried noodles that come with a packet of bouillon, not with the labour-intensive-but-awesome real article.
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