Bernhardsson’s razor. Someone should make a Wikipedia entry for that.
Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
61–70 of 94 posts
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#62Y'all missing the most important paragraph in the whole article: > I spent many years working in a satellite office. A lot of the time when I had some deep technical disagreement about something, I'd fly to the main HQ, and go out for dinner with the other team. I wouldn't even talk about technology, just about random stuff. Once they knew me, and realize I was a human (and not a faceless blob), most technical disagr…
I've always believed telecommuting needs the remote equivalent of the golf course. There are certain human elements that cannot be built over a Zoom call, but do not inherently require a physical presence. I have never started a company and I was hire #76 at my current place, but if I were to start something remote, I would find a game or hobby appreciated by all the founders and make sure that remained a bedrock of…
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Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#63> Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by opportunity cost
"Why didn't we invest in long term issues?" (say virus research...)
Because I can make lots in finance this quarter."
As I understand it humans have (at least) 2 really big problems in rational thought: 1) A bias towards the short term and 2) unknown unknowns (cue Nassim Taleb)
Never attribute to higher order stupidity that which can be attributed to lower order brain functions.
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#64I don't get the use of the terminology here. Opportunity cost is the cost associated by not reaping the benefits of an alternative not being picked. This is a cost from the perspective of the party making the choice. So in this story, 'opportunity cost' is not an explanation why something didn't happen. It is a side effect of something not happening. You could say the real opportunity cost in this story is the startu…
The terminology is fine. "Why haven't you already done X?" "We were doing Y, we thought it was more important."
There is more than one way to refer to this familiar situation. I could say "opportunity cost," I could say "priority," I could say "limited resources." I could pick one of those and say the others are all wrong, but what do I gain by doing that?
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#65This 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…
> but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour
That's when you clone their project and set aside four hours on a weekend/downtime and open a PR (if you happen to finish in four hours)!
I try to commit to fixing annoying bugs whenever I can spare a wee bit of time. Sometimes my attempt is a hacky or not-so-great solution, but it's close enough that those close to the project can realize that it only needs a few more lines in exactly the right place or choose to ignore it.
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#66You often hear people in engineering teams say something to the effect of "I can't understand why this was built this way. It's been done stupidly", but invariably there's some key piece of contextual information that's missing like, as you say, there simply wasn't enough time. I also wrote about this recently: https://timwhite.digital/building-software-sharing-knowledge
> I can't understand why this was built this way. It's been done stupidly
Or that the way to do it better simply didn't exist back then :)
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#67I don't get the use of the terminology here. Opportunity cost is the cost associated by not reaping the benefits of an alternative not being picked. This is a cost from the perspective of the party making the choice. So in this story, 'opportunity cost' is not an explanation why something didn't happen. It is a side effect of something not happening. You could say the real opportunity cost in this story is the startu…
>So in this story, 'opportunity cost' is not an explanation why something didn't happen. It is a side effect of something not happening. >You could say the real opportunity cost in this story is the startup teams having a bunch of unhappy users. The explanation for the missing features is simply: they did something else. The "opportunity cost" _is_ an explanation and your suggestion of shifting the label "opportunity…
I think the level 1 explanation isn't entirely trivial, actually. There are several level 1 hypotheses one might have at that point.
"Why is feature X missing?"
1. They decided to do something else, and by extension, not this (e.g. because of opportunity costs)
2. They decided not to do anything (e.g. because the product is abandoned)
3. They evaluated the possibility of adding feature X, and decided it doesn't make sense now, even if the resources to implement it were available (similar to the above 2 but it means feature X is unlikely to get implemented without some external thing happening to make it make more sense)
4. They evaluated the possibility of adding feature X, and decided it doesn't make sense ever (e.g. because it directly cannibalizes their primary business model)
If you would like feature X as a customer or potential customer, you may care which of those is actually the case. If you are responsible for a large chunk of their revenue, and feature X is make-or-break for you, 1 and 3 are ok scenarios for you, but in scenarios 2 and 4 you're unlikely to have much luck. If you are evaluating whether or not to start using this product, scenario 2 may be alarming enough to make you choose another product entirely, and scenario 4 tells you important things about their business model.
The article is suggesting that people overestimate the probability of explanations 2, 3, and 4, and that most of the time explanation 1 is the real one, especially for obvious shortcomings in a product. By the author's evaluation, explanation 1 is "opportunity cost", explanations 3 and 4 are "strategic reason", and explanation 2 isn't really covered (though it could fall under "opportunity cost" if you stretch).
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#68Y'all missing the most important paragraph in the whole article: > I spent many years working in a satellite office. A lot of the time when I had some deep technical disagreement about something, I'd fly to the main HQ, and go out for dinner with the other team. I wouldn't even talk about technology, just about random stuff. Once they knew me, and realize I was a human (and not a faceless blob), most technical disagr…
I've always believed telecommuting needs the remote equivalent of the golf course. There are certain human elements that cannot be built over a Zoom call, but do not inherently require a physical presence. I have never started a company and I was hire #76 at my current place, but if I were to start something remote, I would find a game or hobby appreciated by all the founders and make sure that remained a bedrock of…
I see the good intention behind all of these, but also feel there is the other side that is too often overlooked.
Going on golf courses together, dining with the team etc. are the traditional recipes to create trust. But it's walking that fine line between personal and professional life, while also bridging the technical abilities parts and the personal chemistry parts.
I understand we are all human and personal feelings have an impact on work, it can't be extracted up to a point. I'm just not sure we should see it as something that should be perpetuated, moved online or adapted to new environments if those were by default devoid of these elements.
Basically I'd hope we can prioritise other ways to create trust than building personal bonds (TBH, being good at one's job for a decent amount of time seems plenty enough to me)
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always believed telecommuting needs the remote equivalent of the golf course. There are certain human elements that cannot be built over a Zoom call, but do not inherently require a physical presence. I have never started a company and I was hire #76 at my current place, but if I were to start something remote, I would find a game or hobby appreciated by all the founders and make sure that remained a bedrock of…
This is a huge opportunity. It would serve a great need to create a structured, low-pressure activity for potential business partners to participate in as they socialize over video chat. Given the potential to democratize socializing to form business partnerships, it would catch on all on its own as a way to be inclusive during the pandemic in a way that golf never was. Semi-related, I was reading a sociological rese…
Activities give you an excuse to be together. It reduces the pressure to perform socially and thus lets things happen more naturally.
For example, think about dating. It can be exhausting to just meet somebody new for dinner. You have to keep up an interesting conversation without much help, hoping you'll stumble upon some common interests.
It's generally easier to do an activity where you can focus on the task, talk about how to do it well, have an excuse for lulls in the conversation, etc.
Re: Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost
#70This 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 always vote for doing the things that represent bottlenecks.
It's always going to be a choice of doing these 5 things versus these 20 others unless one of those "20 others" means we can now do 6 things in the same amount of time. If you can pile a bunch of those up and get to 10, a lot of rhetoric goes out the window, on both sides.
Sharpen your damn saw.