'Hey Number 17 '
404media.co
'Hey Number 17 '
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Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#2I don't think the issue is necessarily the tool, but rather the execution. I think everybody can agree that improving efficiency is a good thing, and tools to track/improve it are a net benefit, but the way they approached it was abhorrent.
But seriously, who approved posting that (before it was deleted)?
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#3[deleted]
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#4I don't think the issue is necessarily the tool, but rather the execution. I think everybody can agree that improving efficiency is a good thing, and tools to track/improve it are a net benefit, but the way they approached it was abhorrent. But seriously, who approved posting that (before it was deleted)?
I’m not sure everybody can agree that improving efficiency is necessarily a good thing at all points on the curve, nor even that simple output metrics can fully capture it. Laundry workers at Disney memorably referred to the “efficiency” leaderboard management forced on them—to improve “efficiency” through public humiliation—as the “electronic whip.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/10/21/disne...
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#5Dang this was depressing and appropriate to read on HN I guess.
In unrelated I saw a license plate with just “YC” today.
I thought the article was gonna be the following joke:
It’s a guys first night in jail. At 9pm one of the other inmates yells “51!” And all the other inmates laugh and laugh. A moment later another inmate yells “29!” And all the other inmates laugh and laugh. The new inmate asks the cellmate - what’s going on with the numbers? The other inmate replies, “we’ve all been in here so long we assigned jokes to a number and just say them instead. Why don’t you give it a try?”
So the new inmates yells - “14!”. And it’s silent The new inmate asked the cellmate, “what happened, what did I do wrong?”
And the cellmate said, “you didn’t tell it right..”
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#6I don't think the issue is necessarily the tool, but rather the execution. I think everybody can agree that improving efficiency is a good thing, and tools to track/improve it are a net benefit, but the way they approached it was abhorrent. But seriously, who approved posting that (before it was deleted)?
>I think everybody can agree that improving efficiency is a good thing, and tools to track/improve it are a net benefit
Well in a void, yes, but in reality, no: You pay prices to acquire things. Occasionally we increase efficiency with no downsides aside from investment cost or complexity, but much more commonly at least part of the price paid is increased pressure on those at the bottom (lower wages, unemployment, time, stress, dignity, etc etc).
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#7Imagine if they had read something like Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming.
Instead of creating a digital whip for shallow (or even outright harmful) managers, they could have developed a QA tool grounded in real, deep thinking—one that respects proven principles of manufacturing.
There’s still time to course-correct, and embracing some of the foundational literature on the topic could make the difference.
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#8I don't think the issue is necessarily the tool, but rather the execution. I think everybody can agree that improving efficiency is a good thing, and tools to track/improve it are a net benefit, but the way they approached it was abhorrent. But seriously, who approved posting that (before it was deleted)?
Man, you would make a excellent role for a hollywood version of Dantes Inferno.
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#9Reminds of the hinges scene in Schindler's List
Re: 'Hey Number 17 '
#10I think we should have a reckoning as a society regarding the prevalence and predilections of sociopaths. Patric Gagne is a PsyD with diagnosed sociopathy (technically anti-social personality disorder, I think) who writes and speaks about her experience and she makes a number of good points. One is that we often can't conceive of sociopaths as anything but the stylized depictions we get in media where they are often portrayed as violent animal abusers or serial killers. Her next point is that reframing this image by identifying a disorder she proposes should be called "low affect disorder" will make it more apparent how people afflicted by it consider and navigate through the world to help us more readily address the potential harms associated with that kind of apathy. It would help us all to be able to recognize that kind of behavior to the point where we can box and name it, challenging its ability to cause harm undetected.
One hopeful note is that the apathy goes both ways: harm is just a means to an end, and if we can offer alternative paths to those ends that don't incentivize harm then we'd all be better for it.
This kind of company, as well as the activities of YC generally, is evidence that we have normalized a certain kind of harm through the development of our economic and government institutions. Those with low affect and who struggle in the empathy department are more than happy to live with ideologies that ignore suffering as long as it's separated by one or more layers of bureaucracy. This normalization is essentially sanity-washing for the profit motive.
I don't see anything indicating this trend will reverse in the near future, there's a pathology in society that seems to prevent actual accountability these days.