How to Ruin Your Company With One Bad Process • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Ruin Your Company With One Bad Process

#91

Post by Monkeyget » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 1:51 PM UTC

the_real_bto wrote: post #13

virmundi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mentor of mine, David Kathan, said something more colorful, "Of course, you can have a baby in a month if you use 9 women". People should read Mythical Man Month more.

Fred Brooks has some gems. I'm especially fond of the Second System Effect [0] [0] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SecondSystemEffect

Another section of MMM directly related to this article would be the chapter "ten Pounds in a Five-Pound Sack".

It talks about allocating memory to the various components of the OS. It begins with a delightfully outdated section on the cost of memory: if the OS weighs 400ko it costs the user $4800 per month when renting just for that memory!

His take-aways on allocating a limited resource (memory here but it could be $) are:

* Budget every aspect, not just the resource itself. Otherwise implementers will end up swapping to disk to respect the limit, killing performances.

* Define what must be achieved along with the budget. Otherwise things will be thrown over the fence to a neighbour.

* Perspective and overall integrity must be watched : "The project was large enough and management communication poor enough to prompt many members of the team to see themselves as contestants making brownie points, rather than as builders making programming products. Each suboptimized his piece to meet his targets; few stopped to think about the total effect on the customer. [...] Fostering a total-system, user-oriented attitude may well be the most important function of the programming manager".

Re: How to Ruin Your Company With One Bad Process

#92

Post by justbaker » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 3:38 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

Interesting article for sure and I think it highlights exactly how you get unwanted bloat and how to prevent it. Budgeting has always been a dark art, especially for creative work, and adding smart constraints on the front end are some ways to reign things in - however I think this largely applies to the companies who can say the following: "we had plenty of cash in the bank." I know for us our budgeting process is,…

I'm glad I wasn't the only one. Drake for god sakes.. like why? This is who gets quoted..

Re: How to Ruin Your Company With One Bad Process

#93

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 8:21 AM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #77

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But realize that by giving white people a double standard in terms of how they can express themselves, you're being racist against white people, and for black people, furthering the racial and cultural divide. Rationalizing treating people differently based on the color of their skin isn't any less racist just because you're on the populist, politically-correct side. No you're not, you're being entirely consistent.…

On a literal basis it is racist because you invoke race. On a logical basis it is racist because you ignore context and treat the use of a word based on the color of the skin of the person using it. On a moral basis it is racist because one group getting offended is not any more or less valid than some other group getting offended. Most importantly, the fact that the word is offensive to someone does not invalidate t…

More fulsome answer.

You need to check the definition of racism. It's not simply discrimination on the grounds of race, it includes that there is a belief in the superiority / inferiority of the race(s) under discussion. Maybe it's just me but I really don't see how that applies here. No one is saying you can't use the word because only black people are good enough to use it so on a logical basis, no, it's not racism, at least not by the real definition.

In terms of the double standard, it's not a double standard at all, it's a standard that exists in all conversations which is that the context and the relationships and history between the two people involved matter. I can say things to my daughter which would be massively offensive for you to say. I can insult my best friend using an unambiguously obscene word and he'll laugh at me, you do it and he'd likely swing for you. In both these cases it's entirely clear that the context is important so I don't see why these are fine but it becomes a double standard to invoke context elsewhere.

These are very, very old arguments that have been attempted time and time again but they simply don't hold water.