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Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)

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

#101

Post by hinkley »

jollybean wrote: post #14
hinkley wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse even than that. "At most linearly" is someone's idea of subtle irony. You only get linearity if you discover the existing team is less capable than the newly added members, or you're asleep and this is a dream. If the value of new people diminishes logarithmicly, or much more likely, at the square root of the number of people, you must tackle tasks that a smaller team could not. Otherwise you'll be out-com…

So that's neat, but not what I was saying. This is completely the wrong way to think about division of labour. We started to figure this out 300 years ago for god's sake. It's not helpful think about our tasks as a series of bits of work to be accomplished that we hire spigot-workers to do. White collar work is mostly not labour in that sense. Thinking about your organization like a CPU doing calculations is utterly…

We started to figure this out 12,000+ years ago at the dawn of civilization, when specializations finally show up in the archeological records.

If you want to build a cart you need a woodworker and a couple of blacksmiths feeding your cartwright the proper materials. You’re right that five blacksmiths won’t get the cart built faster, but there’s a whole world of items, including in software, that are composites of anywhere from a handful to a hundred specialties.

I don’t feel like you’ve countered my theory about the need for higher order creation. Someone somewhere had to look at how many musical instruments there were in the world and think, “composer” and “conductor”, which not only gave you a job but suddenly put a bunch of musicians to work.

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

#102

Post by jdmichal »

actionfromafar wrote: post #96
ciphol wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is a "pair of beers".

To me "a pair of" can colloquially (see, I did it again) mean "a bunch of".

I'm with you on "couple" potentially not being exactly two, though I tend to default to using "few" in such cases. But I can't sign up for "pair" not being exactly two.

Yay language!

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

#103

Post by jdmichal »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #36
alvincodes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at the point now that I'll immediately stop reading whenever I see obscure expressions in latin or French.

English is basically Latin + French + a few other sprinkles. These expressions are pretty trivial to pick up, especially if you have read much history, logic, etc. For example, his phrase cum hoc, ergo propter hoc is a pun on post hoc, ergo propter hoc , which is a well-known logical fallacy.

English is a Germanic language that was injected with a large amount of French vocabulary. Latin and Greek are typically used in very specific jargons, such as philosophy or medicine, with some phrases escaping confinement and reaching a larger population.

English being a Germanic language is why the whole "no prepositions at the end of sentences" thing never made sense. That was a Latin rule. But Germanic languages have a property of augmenting verbs using prepositions. In German itself these are called "separable verbs".

Ich stehe auf. I stand up.

"Up" is not a preposition in this sentence. It's an integral part of the verb. That is, the verb is, in its entirety, "aufstehen" or "to stand up".

Meanwhile, this same phrase in Spanish uses reflexivity:

Levanto me. I lift myself.

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

#104

Post by jdmichal »

mellavora wrote: post #71
alvincodes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at the point now that I'll immediately stop reading whenever I see obscure expressions in latin or French.

Good think you left greek off the list, otherwise you'd never get anywhere in statistical reasoning. ceteris paribus, technical terms are obscure to people outside the field. Using them well is a nice way to bring people into the field, and to signal that you mean the term in a very specific context. And that paragraph is one of the worst uses of "ceteris paribus" I've seen. For one, I'm not even talking about econom…

Yes. Jargons exist for a reason. They develop because people working together come to a common agreement on specific meanings for specific terms, regardless of common usage. And it typically leads to more precise communication. "Legalese" is a great example.

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

#105

Post by elcomet »

hinkley wrote: post #100
elcomet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only get linearity if you discover the existing team is less capable than the newly added members Could you explain your reasoning? This doesn't seem right to me. If you have linearity, this means that every new individual is exactly as productive as all other individuals

If you get twice as much work done by 10 people as 5, you need to think about what the new people brought to the table, or the old ones don’t. If the team didn’t have a facilitator, for instance, some team members may not be coordinating, causing issues with finishing tasks. Because despite having a factorial increase in communication paths, you still got twice as much done? Are you sure? You have to ask these questi…

This doesn't make sense to me. Adding more people add communication overhead so you would get sub-linear return. I don't see how you can even expect more than linear return.

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

#106

Post by jollybean »

emmelaich wrote: post #17
jollybean wrote: post #9

"The work capacity of an organization scales, at most, linearly as new members are added. " WTF? This is a bad way to think about the 'division of labour'. One man cannot ever get over a 10 foot wall. Two men together can absolutely do it. 'Work' is not the measurement, 'productivity' is. Even the fleeting thinker, who works only 1 day a week, but shows up every day, may be absolutely critical to making things work.…

The article is addressing a more fundamental point I think. You cannot escape Little's Law for instance. You can change the variance but in the long run the average is what matters.

Yes, you can. The whole point of white collar work is to escape Little's Law. Automation, outsourcing, better processes etc..

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

#108

Post by ramphastidae »

jdmichal wrote: post #102
actionfromafar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me "a pair of" can colloquially (see, I did it again) mean "a bunch of".

I'm with you on "couple" potentially not being exactly two, though I tend to default to using "few" in such cases. But I can't sign up for "pair" not being exactly two. Yay language!

If someone puts on a pair of jeans followed by a pair of socks, how many articles of clothing have been put on? :)

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

#109

Post by jdmichal »

ramphastidae wrote: post #108
jdmichal wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on "couple" potentially not being exactly two, though I tend to default to using "few" in such cases. But I can't sign up for "pair" not being exactly two. Yay language!

If someone puts on a pair of jeans followed by a pair of socks, how many articles of clothing have been put on? :)

A pair!
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