Individuals Matter
danluu.com
Individuals Matter
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Re: Individuals Matter
#2This is a really interesting and enlightening article that covers an important topic, and it's honestly sad that it will get less engagement than some clickbait or hot-topic issue.
Re: Individuals Matter
#3Would like to see these thoughts applied to public health policy.
Re: Individuals Matter
#4Granny: “There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
Mightily Oats: “It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
Granny: “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they mean they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
Mightily Oats: “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”
Granny: “But they start with thinking about people as things.”
Re: Individuals Matter
#5"Who is going to do it?" is always my first question whenever I am asked to estimate a piece of work. PMs/EMs are usually taken aback by the response, as if we are all supposed to pretend that all dev "resources" are equal. Yet reality doesn't fit into neat planning spreadsheets or burndown graphs, so often gets ignored.
Re: Individuals Matter
#6Would like to see these thoughts applied to public health policy.
...or all public policy.
Re: Individuals Matter
#7[deleted]
Re: Individuals Matter
#8"Who is going to do it?" is always my first question whenever I am asked to estimate a piece of work. PMs/EMs are usually taken aback by the response, as if we are all supposed to pretend that all dev "resources" are equal. Yet reality doesn't fit into neat planning spreadsheets or burndown graphs, so often gets ignored.
It's not even necessarily about skill, could easily be that someone is already spearheading a higher priority or whatever.
Re: Individuals Matter
#9Would like to see these thoughts applied to public health policy.
>Some people seem to view companies like a game of SimCity, where if you want more money, you can turn a knob, increase taxes, and get more money, uniformly impacting the city. But companies are not a game of SimCity. If you want more attrition and turn a knob that cranks that up, you don't get additional attrition that's sampled uniformly at random. People, as a whole, cannot be treated as an abstraction where the actions company leadership takes impacts everyone in the same way. The people who are most effective will be disproportionately likely to leave if you turn a knob that leads to increased attrition.
This gem applies to so many fields. It's bonkers that this has to be spelled out to people who are ostensibly experts. This is why you never, ever take anyone seriously who thinks of society like a model.
Re: Individuals Matter
#10Would like to see these thoughts applied to public health policy.
>Some people seem to view companies like a game of SimCity, where if you want more money, you can turn a knob, increase taxes, and get more money, uniformly impacting the city. But companies are not a game of SimCity. If you want more attrition and turn a knob that cranks that up, you don't get additional attrition that's sampled uniformly at random. People, as a whole, cannot be treated as an abstraction where the a…
> The people who are most effective will be disproportionately likely to leave if you turn a knob that leads to increased attrition.
> This is why you never, ever take anyone seriously who thinks of society like a model.
The description above is just a different model