Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

erikbern.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#21

Post by aaaaarghZombies »

ImaCake wrote: post #15

What if the opportunity cost is borne out of malice? I briefly worked as a quality control microbiologist at a manufacturing facility. We were constantly understaffed and unable to meet requirements. Heaps of missed opportunity to improve things. But my feeling was the the company didn't care beyond the facade of having some micro testing. There was always talk of improving things, but things never improved.

> What if the opportunity cost is borne out of malice?

Seems to work for the labor party.

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#22

Post by chris_st »

mcqueenjordan wrote: post #6

This is such an important concept. I was just explaining this to product/leadership the other week: "It's not a matter of convincing me we should do this. Obviously, we should. But we also have a hundred other things that we should do, and a few dozen things that we need to do. So it's not a discussion of 'should we'; it's a discussion of understanding how important this thing is in relation to all of the other thing…

I had a kind of... manipulative co-worker who often tried to work around the Product Owner. He'd come into my office and ask, "Can we do ?", hoping to trigger my inner engineer to be interested in how to solve that problem.

He finally got tired of me saying, "Given enough time and resources, yes, we can do pretty much anything! Talk to about what we SHOULD do."

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#23

Post by branko_d »

leoedin wrote: post #3

This rings really true with my experience at a startup. Everyone involved in the product could see it's weaknesses, we just didn't have the manpower to change them. I've definitely fallen into the "attribute to malice/stupidity" trap as well, even when I know that the people responsible are working flat out, if you're not in the trenches it's so easy to say "but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour". It's somethi…

On the other hand, the importance of a specific task can sometimes be adequately assessed only by a narrow group of people, making it difficult to convey the importance to the larger organization. This usually falls in the realm of performance, "rare" bugs (especially non-deterministic bugs) and code quality.

Such "invisible" work may be difficult to justify over "visible" work, yet is crucial for the long-term quality of the product.

There is a decades-old ERP system (that shall remain unnamed), which to this day doesn't use foreign keys in its database. The consequences of this are not immediately visible, but are very serious in the long term, including data corruption (which I have actually seen with their customer) and (somewhat counter-intuitively) performance (https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120).

Having had a glimpse of their internal culture, I'm not surprised. Any "foreign key champion" would have been quickly assigned to "more important" tasks.

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#25

Post by artsyca »

mcqueenjordan wrote: post #6

This is such an important concept. I was just explaining this to product/leadership the other week: "It's not a matter of convincing me we should do this. Obviously, we should. But we also have a hundred other things that we should do, and a few dozen things that we need to do. So it's not a discussion of 'should we'; it's a discussion of understanding how important this thing is in relation to all of the other thing…

Did you ever think you'd get here when you were a kid building spaceships out of lego?

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#26

Post by GoToRO »

austincheney wrote: post #16

As a JavaScript developer I find the stupidity versus opportunity cost virtually impossible to distinguish. After all, its how I involuntarily became a developer in the first place. I was hired by Travelocity late in 2007 to be a designer. In early 2008 I was a UI developer and if I wanted to continue to be employed I would have to figure it out. JavaScript developers, at least competent ones, were nearly impossible…

What I realized is that companies that think developers are a cost, are not really software companies. Maybe they need software, but it's the same way one needs a visit to the doctor: you go because you have to, you have no passion for it.

What really upsets developers is the extra work that is generated by managers that should not manage anything really.

If you are competent enough to be able to create from zero and deliver a software product/service it seems the only way is to have your own product/service.

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#27

Post by wefarrell »

JanisL wrote: post #20

I worked with a company last year that consistently made poor decisions due to lack of resources, especially time. Sometimes "opportunity cost" was used as an excuse for a lot of things. Now sure if you have a few different immediate options and a lack of capacity you will be forced to choose certain options and ignore others. Scarcity is a real thing and I'm not arguing otherwise. But the bit that might be classifie…

It sounds like they were focusing on the urgent at the expense of the important: https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#28

Post by artsyca »

runawaybottle wrote: post #11

I mostly disagree with this. At a certain point it becomes inexcusable, and I personally never judge them as being stupid or lazy, I just attribute it to lack of empathy. It’s painful for people that have to regularly deal with something not straightforward (over complex) or just plain old messy (no concern over what it would be like to revisit the code for anyone, even themselves). Ruins my day(s), and it takes some…

False corporacy makes people do stupid things

A casual company culture is an implied pungent disregard for others and it comes with its own pungent smell of entitlement too

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#29

Post by artsyca »

dade_ wrote: post #12

Some of the worst managers I have worked for didn't understand opportunity cost. Good idea to test during a job interview or before starting a partnership. Nothing more maddening than working for an Ahab chasing whales.

Or a canine chasing tails

Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost

#30

Post by artsyca »

eythian wrote: post #4

I usually find that when I have to go "why is this the way it is, that's stupid!" I usually end up finding out that there is (sometimes was) some design constraint I wasn't aware of that caused to to need to be that way, and actually it makes sense.

Hear hear and that is usually some trifling corporate rumour that keeps circling and lending itself legitimacy but nobody recognizes as hearsay and everybody accepts as fact
Post reply on HN