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Individuals Matter

danluu.com

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Re: Individuals Matter

#331

Post by jodrellblank »

na85 wrote: post #161

Did we ever figure out why he wants the computer that comes in the smallest box?

Can you not just imagine?

Luu: "I want the computer with the smallest box"

Sales rep: "Boxes are nothing to do with computer performance"

Luu: "I understand. Still, please humour me?"

Rep: "But there are sneering people on HN who think you think you're better than them. Somehow this should be important to you"

Luu: "Anyway, moving on, I want to buy a computer"

Rep: "No. Not until you explain."

Luu: "Fine, I want to ship it to my mom in Alaska and want to minimise shipping cost."

Rep: "Ah! Gotcha! Apple will ship it for you, to anywhere"

Luu: "I don't want to use your shipping, I need to customise it first"

Rep: "Ah! Gotcha! iCloud sync will transfer her data when she signs in"

Luu: "I can't use that, I want to install custom new things"

Rep: "Smallness often comes at a cost premium. You might find that a bigger computer has a little extra shipping, but overall comes out cheaper"

Luu: "I'm paying for the computer, but my mom is paying for the shipping. It's more important for me to minimise shipping cost than computer cost"

Rep: "If you're going to pay part of a more expensive computer cost, why can't you pay part of a more expensive shipping cost?"

Luu: "When my mom sees the shipping price on the parcel, she will send me that amount of money, she can't afford it, and I don't want to argue with her about it."

Rep: "She can't afford shipping but you're not paying for it? You're not paying for food or rent?"

Luu: "What I am and am not paying my mom for is irrelevant. She doesn't want to live off me, but will accept a gift, but also wants to pay her way when she can, and I want to respect her wishes. This is the agreement we came to."

Rep: "You don't want to have a small discussion with your mom to save money? She won't change the agreement to save you money?"

Luu: "I won't let her change the agreement to save me money, if it makes her feel like she didn't contribute and then she feels bad using the gift"

Rep: "Luu, I..."

Luu: "This could go on literally forever. The people on HN are internet people who thrive on cynicism. There is no resolution to this which will satisfy them, nor is that a goal I am trying to meet. This is not what I came here to discuss. Will you please help me find the computer with the smallest box in exchange for money, for reasons which I am perfectly happy to agree are irrelevant and irrational, but nevertheless am sticking with?"

Re: Individuals Matter

#332

Post by evancoop »

An overlooked notion, analogous to fat-tail, high-upside ROI is the absence of a similar downside risk. In the case of the sclerotic, flagging, midsize company failing to adapt, we're actually talking about a fixed downside (the company can fail) and a virtually unlimited upside. In this case, allowing talented humans to explore seems mathematically-required. And yet...

Re: Individuals Matter

#333

Post by kayodelycaon »

onion2k wrote: post #314
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Practically all the actual work a PM does is communication. Practically all the actual work a PM does can be replaced with a script and dashboard

Practically all the actual work a PM does can be replaced with a script and dashboard That is entirely true if you have an organised, disciplined dev team that communicates well. Good luck with that.

This isn't true even with a organized, disciplined team. What happens is the responsibilities of get divided out to other people on the team. Usually not the entire team, so some people are stuck with unacknowledged overhead.

Re: Individuals Matter

#334

Post by 1penny42cents »

OP touches upon a critical point of human reasoning: we have a bias towards simplicity.

We favor the legible (as the article calls it), the tractable, the countable, the fungible. At certain levels of complexity, seeing reality as it is is just impossible. This complexity can be in terms of the subject itself, or the organizational/communication overhead required to tackle that subject.

This bias towards simplicity is more often optimal than not. As he noted, the variance in performance becomes unbearably huge as you try to get more precise.

The thing is that it's easy to pick out where simple models are wrong. The more complex the subject, the more edge cases there are, the fatter the tails are, etc. But it's harder to replace those models with new ones that increase precision while retaining sufficient efficiency. So just as simple models account for the cost of an employee without accounting for their value; he critiques those models for their precision without accounting for their efficiency. It's not as easy to predict/calculate value as it is to calculate cost.

So while he's right in saying "these models are wrong", people won't be persuaded until they hear "these models are better". And "figure out the optimal solution in every individual context" is not a better model, not given the complexity of our work and the limited resources we have.

Anyone taking the message here as "managers are idiots", are also oversimplifying things. They feel the moral high ground of being right, and it can be helpful to highlight where our models are wrong. But we also need to replace them with better ones, which is much harder than critiquing the best usable-but-imprecise ones we have.

Re: Individuals Matter

#335

Post by zweifuss »

jseban wrote: post #240
MrPatan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you cannot say is that there are 0.1x engineers.

In my experience there are plenty of -10x engineers.

1x is defined as the least productive engineer in a team. But I know what you mean. Sometimes a team can be more productive with fewer people.

Re: Individuals Matter

#336

Post by fitzn »

tremon wrote: post #316
fitzn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. - Bill Gates

It's a nice aphorism, but it's a very bad analogy. Before the build of an aircraft is started, the target weight of the assembled product is (roughly) known. Therefore, in the process of building an aircraft, the assembled weight at least goes up from 0 to $target -- in an erratic fashion, but it's still a continuous measurement. I have never seen a program design specification that even attempted to quantify the lin…

The initial comment was related to attribution for "who built" some piece of software based on lines of code. The analogous argument would then be assigning attribution for the built aircraft to whoever produced the heaviest components. Given that that would be illogical, I think the analogy is apt.

Re: Individuals Matter

#337

Post by polskibus »

silexia wrote: post #330
polskibus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deliberately used “closer to 1x”, but let me respond with an anecdote. I know several people, each working in a different org, who explicitly manage their managers by demanding to work on issues that have good visibility, are not too short >2 weeks but not too long <2-3 months so they are ready before the next review period. This way they are seen from the outside as very good performers while someone else is doing…

I built and own a company with 200x employees building a wide variety of websites for people. The 10x programmer is real. The 5x salesperson is real. The 20x manager is real.

Sure they are, I'm arguing that their force multiplier has to be taken with the context they are in, and that the change of the context can reduce the multiplier.

Re: Individuals Matter

#338

Post by ebiester »

BobbyJo wrote: post #318
onion2k wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PM proceeded to take an estimate from this person, hand it to a brand new hire, and expect them to deliver on that. Needless to say it could have gone better for me. This is a really good thing to learn from, although I doubt it felt like it at the time. The key thing that every junior dev needs to take from it is that it's fine if things don't take however long the estimate is so long as you're regularly communi…

> I think I'm going quite slowly because I'm having to learn a lot, and I don't think I'll deliver this in 3 days Their first question after you say this will be "well, how long will it take?" Whether or not you actually have any idea how much time you'll need, you'll have to give an answer, and on that blows the schedule up too much will be strongly frowned upon. Now you've realized you're working for a crappy PM/EM…

That is a function of time in company and continuity of team more than skill of manager.

Re: Individuals Matter

#339

Post by mjmahone17 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #153
efitz wrote: post #116

I am a security engineer but have been a business leader from time to time. Business leaders often need to plan around dates- eg ”should we spend $50k announcing at conference Y in month Z, or should we wait until month A?” “Our competition just launched; will we be able to launch this quarter (the board wants to know, and we have to report material financial impact items quarterly or face SEC fines)?” Every team I h…

> So show me a methodology that mere mortals can implement successfully. If all you can do is complain and point out unicorn 500x engineers (yeah try hiring for that characteristic, good luck), then I don’t want to hear it. But if you have a practical idea on how to “solve” planning, then you have my full attention. TFA doesn't suggest hiring 500x engineers, it suggests taking steps to retain highly effective enginee…

A point the article also alludes to: often people are only “unicorns” due to the specific context they’re working on. Move them to a different project, and your high value person may be a net negative. And it’s not possible for people who aren’t familiar with a person’s work to anticipate how making that person switch projects will affect the quality or quantity of their output.

Re: Individuals Matter

#340

Post by mr_tristan »

I’ve experienced a corollary to this: individuals don’t instantaneously gel into teams. I’ve found places that try to solve hard problems by “finding good folks and putting them together on a ‘squad’”. Or, deciding to reorganize and just breaking up teams and mashing them up in weird ways.

What I have seen work: swapping managers. Leaving the team intact but bringing a new manager in can actually change execution a lot. But this is just not how a lot of businesses like to think.

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