5 ms·

This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations and shared co

This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations and shared context. No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. We invent bigger and better sewage pipes, some people get paid to build them, and everything's fine. Lots of people like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode at the same time and then talk about it with their coworkers at the office the next day. It really is a minority of people who think otherwise. I run a heavily asynchronous, remote company, with fully remote customers, and mostly remote employees. I bias toward hiring locally just so I have someone to talk to.

keeganjw 9y ago
Exactly my thinking. Who care's if Friday is a social construction. It allows people to meet up, talk, and relax before they all have two days off together. How beautiful is that? If people were all working at different times and on different schedules, how would friends and family ever meet up in groups larger than two on any regular basis?
humanrebar 9y ago
> No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. People care that they sit in two hours of rush hour traffic per day. There is zero synchronicity when you're staring at the license plates in front of you.
- dkersten 9y ago
  This is a problem of a car centric society. I’ve been in places where public transport is the norm and travel was a lot easier and more efficient, regardless the time of the day. Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. (Sure, there’s places where even that isn’t enough and the public transport pipe is congested. We’ve all seen those videos of trains in some places in asia, for example)
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    > Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. And during rush hour, the highways are a lot more full, and often capacity (number of lanes) is increased to compensate. If people didn't typically commute at the same time, then busses, trains, and car transport would all benefit from a reduction in required peak capacity. This is not in any way specific to cars.
    - dkersten 9y ago
      The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. For example, I was recently in the US and during the day the 6-lane-each-way highways were completely empty, almost like a ghost town, but during rush hour, they were at a complete standstill. > If people didn't typically commute at the same time... Absolutely! That would be ideal.
      - JoshTriplett 9y ago
        > The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. To increase the capacity of trains and busses, you need more trains/busses, larger trains/busses, more train/bus operators, more electricity/gas usage, more storage, more maintenance, and so on. And those same huge trains and busses also become near-empty late at night. Yes, the baseline efficiency of a train or bus is potentially better, making all the standard tradeoffs. But everyone commuting at the same time causes similar problems with both. I'm not arguing against public transit, here, I'm arguing against the claim upthread that "This is a problem of a car centric society", which is orthogonal to a staggered commute.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  But walking with thousands of other people is nice, except in places where large sidewalks were turned over to cars. Old photos of ranhattan show shockingly large walkways which were later turned in to asphalt.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    See also the video "A Trip Down Market Street" (1906), recently discussed [1] at HN. Though it arguably weren't "thousands" of walking people. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations and shared context. That's post hoc reasoning. Individuals don't globally optimize to synchronize everything. In fact, most individuals have good reasons for things to be desynced socially - so that they e.g. don't have to take a day off to visit a doctor or submit paperwork to a bank. I suspect though that there is a process through which society tends to keep itself in sync. Not sure what it was, though. > Lots of people like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode at the same time and then talk about it with their coworkers at the office the next day. Does this still happen, given the rise of the torrents, on-demand streaming, and the way TV shows distribution tend to be spread out over time? (Maybe it does, I'm an antisocial engineer, so I might have missed it.)
- trjordan 9y ago
  It does happen. For example, Game of Thrones.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  If there were no set hours how would you be able to depend on the weekday being when you could go to the bank or the doctor? What you're talking about is being the beneficiary of the very thing you're decrying.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I would expect that one of the hundred thousand of local bank branches (I have no idea why banks keep opening on every other street these days) would have opening hours that would align with my time off. As it is now, they all are perfectly synchronized to be open during regular working ours, i.e. when most people are at work.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I don't know about you, but I rarely want to go to any old bank as opposed to a specific one.
rtpg 9y ago
I think you can look a bit beyond just that though. Think about tourist locations. Intense seasonality means we have to build up huge infrastructure for a peak ... Month? Per year. Mainly because kids are off at a certain time of year. Hotels are emptier during the week. Dentist appointments are impossible to get on lunch breaks. I agree that synchronicity is valuable because a phone call is 10x more information dense than an email sent 3 hours ago. But wouldn't it be interesting to add a bit of flexibility to everyone's work schedule and see what happens? Aside: lots of industries are shift workers, and most low-income people work off of the Mon-Fri 9-5. It's oddly a pretty solved problem but we decided against adopting that for office work in most cases. I bet kids and school don't help things
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Tourism can be weather dependent too. Visiting Ireland in january isn't quite the same as May.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  > Aside: lots of industries are shift workers, and most low-income people work off of the Mon-Fri 9-5. It's oddly a pretty solved problem but we decided against adopting that for office work in most cases. I bet kids and school don't help things But I mean, really, if you're obligated to keep a schedule anyway, don't you want to keep one that allows you to be awake during the day and sleep at night, and to generally be available for other commitments? I've done both and I'd take the 9:00-5:00 over the irregular schedule every time. Convenience scheduling a doctor's appointment or job interview doesn't make up for all the inconveniences.
dominotw 9y ago
> No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. I care about not being stuck in the traffic, not having to wait for a machine at the gym, not having to wait at long checkout lines at costco.
juicyfroot 9y ago
As a fully remote employee, I bias toward avoiding employers that have a bias toward hiring local. Why? Because it tells me that something isn't right. That the company does not fully embrace remote work to it's logical end. The company I work for has about 40 employees.... no office, many time zones and what appears to be no geographical bias. I fucking love it and would shudder if they started concentrating more employees near each other.
Fnoord 9y ago
This article describes exactly why the NS (Dutch Railways) provide a cheap card (which is even on sale like half the year) allowing one to get 40% off the fare provided they travel during off hours. The off hours are: mo - fr between 9 AM and 4 PM & from 6.30 PM till 6.30 AM, weekends, and holidays. If you check in, it counts from that time (even if you swap trains or travel for 3 hrs straight into peak hours). There's a few more versions of the card which are essentially trying to achieve the same, just assume you travel in higher volume. For example, there's a more expensive version of the card which makes travel completely free in the weekends. Thing is, people who work get the travel costs reimbursed from their employer so they generally don't care. Its up to the employer to adapt. And given you can game the logging in time I am not sure how effective it is to decrease congestion/pressure. I've also noticed the effect on my partner's job. She works 4 days a week, and wants one day off. Well, the most popular days to take off are Wednesday (because it is in the middle of the week) and Friday. Same with taking days off. Some days and dates are popular, for social reasons. Someone who is antisocial won't have much understanding for that, just like you put. The power system is another example. At times, the German electricity grid is operating on a surplus! Yet another example is getting paid 150% of 200% during holidays such as Christmas (which is how it works in horeca). Fascinating discussion, but just being against social behaviour won't change these situations. There needs to be incentive. Being antisocial or being OK with that with the benefit of receiving a discount seems like a great way to achieve this in situations where it makes sense. Does anyone know examples where it'd make sense, but where it isn't currently applied? Or where it has been tried locally, but isn't implemented world-wide? If you take the toilet flush example: we're not paying for toilet usage in our households (right..?) but we are paying for water. If the price of water would be dynamic based on current demand, and the current demand is transparent, that could decrease demand during peak times just like the other examples do. At the very least, those who cause the congestion pay for it, and pay for the extra costs attached to the peak's effect. On a side note, the thought of highly fluctuating water prices sends shills down my spine.

keeganjw 9y ago

Exactly my thinking. Who care's if Friday is a social construction. It allows people to meet up, talk, and relax before they all have two days off together. How beautiful is that? If people were all working at different times and on different schedules, how would friends and family ever meet up in groups larger than two on any regular basis?

humanrebar 9y ago

> No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. People care that they sit in two hours of rush hour traffic per day. There is zero synchronicity when you're staring at the license plates in front of you.

dkersten 9y ago
This is a problem of a car centric society. I’ve been in places where public transport is the norm and travel was a lot easier and more efficient, regardless the time of the day. Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. (Sure, there’s places where even that isn’t enough and the public transport pipe is congested. We’ve all seen those videos of trains in some places in asia, for example)
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. And during rush hour, the highways are a lot more full, and often capacity (number of lanes) is increased to compensate. If people didn't typically commute at the same time, then busses, trains, and car transport would all benefit from a reduction in required peak capacity. This is not in any way specific to cars.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. For example, I was recently in the US and during the day the 6-lane-each-way highways were completely empty, almost like a ghost town, but during rush hour, they were at a complete standstill. > If people didn't typically commute at the same time... Absolutely! That would be ideal.
    - JoshTriplett 9y ago
      > The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. To increase the capacity of trains and busses, you need more trains/busses, larger trains/busses, more train/bus operators, more electricity/gas usage, more storage, more maintenance, and so on. And those same huge trains and busses also become near-empty late at night. Yes, the baseline efficiency of a train or bus is potentially better, making all the standard tradeoffs. But everyone commuting at the same time causes similar problems with both. I'm not arguing against public transit, here, I'm arguing against the claim upthread that "This is a problem of a car centric society", which is orthogonal to a staggered commute.
CalRobert 9y ago
But walking with thousands of other people is nice, except in places where large sidewalks were turned over to cars. Old photos of ranhattan show shockingly large walkways which were later turned in to asphalt.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  See also the video "A Trip Down Market Street" (1906), recently discussed [1] at HN. Though it arguably weren't "thousands" of walking people. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations and shared context. That's post hoc reasoning. Individuals don't globally optimize to synchronize everything. In fact, most individuals have good reasons for things to be desynced socially - so that they e.g. don't have to take a day off to visit a doctor or submit paperwork to a bank. I suspect though that there is a process through which society tends to keep itself in sync. Not sure what it was, though. > Lots of people like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode at the same time and then talk about it with their coworkers at the office the next day. Does this still happen, given the rise of the torrents, on-demand streaming, and the way TV shows distribution tend to be spread out over time? (Maybe it does, I'm an antisocial engineer, so I might have missed it.)

trjordan 9y ago
It does happen. For example, Game of Thrones.
emodendroket 9y ago
If there were no set hours how would you be able to depend on the weekday being when you could go to the bank or the doctor? What you're talking about is being the beneficiary of the very thing you're decrying.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I would expect that one of the hundred thousand of local bank branches (I have no idea why banks keep opening on every other street these days) would have opening hours that would align with my time off. As it is now, they all are perfectly synchronized to be open during regular working ours, i.e. when most people are at work.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I don't know about you, but I rarely want to go to any old bank as opposed to a specific one.

rtpg 9y ago

I think you can look a bit beyond just that though. Think about tourist locations. Intense seasonality means we have to build up huge infrastructure for a peak ... Month? Per year. Mainly because kids are off at a certain time of year. Hotels are emptier during the week. Dentist appointments are impossible to get on lunch breaks. I agree that synchronicity is valuable because a phone call is 10x more information dense than an email sent 3 hours ago. But wouldn't it be interesting to add a bit of flexibility to everyone's work schedule and see what happens? Aside: lots of industries are shift workers, and most low-income people work off of the Mon-Fri 9-5. It's oddly a pretty solved problem but we decided against adopting that for office work in most cases. I bet kids and school don't help things

CalRobert 9y ago
Tourism can be weather dependent too. Visiting Ireland in january isn't quite the same as May.
emodendroket 9y ago
> Aside: lots of industries are shift workers, and most low-income people work off of the Mon-Fri 9-5. It's oddly a pretty solved problem but we decided against adopting that for office work in most cases. I bet kids and school don't help things But I mean, really, if you're obligated to keep a schedule anyway, don't you want to keep one that allows you to be awake during the day and sleep at night, and to generally be available for other commitments? I've done both and I'd take the 9:00-5:00 over the irregular schedule every time. Convenience scheduling a doctor's appointment or job interview doesn't make up for all the inconveniences.

dominotw 9y ago

> No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. I care about not being stuck in the traffic, not having to wait for a machine at the gym, not having to wait at long checkout lines at costco.

juicyfroot 9y ago

As a fully remote employee, I bias toward avoiding employers that have a bias toward hiring local. Why? Because it tells me that something isn't right. That the company does not fully embrace remote work to it's logical end. The company I work for has about 40 employees.... no office, many time zones and what appears to be no geographical bias. I fucking love it and would shudder if they started concentrating more employees near each other.

Fnoord 9y ago

This article describes exactly why the NS (Dutch Railways) provide a cheap card (which is even on sale like half the year) allowing one to get 40% off the fare provided they travel during off hours. The off hours are: mo - fr between 9 AM and 4 PM & from 6.30 PM till 6.30 AM, weekends, and holidays. If you check in, it counts from that time (even if you swap trains or travel for 3 hrs straight into peak hours). There's a few more versions of the card which are essentially trying to achieve the same, just assume you travel in higher volume. For example, there's a more expensive version of the card which makes travel completely free in the weekends. Thing is, people who work get the travel costs reimbursed from their employer so they generally don't care. Its up to the employer to adapt. And given you can game the logging in time I am not sure how effective it is to decrease congestion/pressure. I've also noticed the effect on my partner's job. She works 4 days a week, and wants one day off. Well, the most popular days to take off are Wednesday (because it is in the middle of the week) and Friday. Same with taking days off. Some days and dates are popular, for social reasons. Someone who is antisocial won't have much understanding for that, just like you put. The power system is another example. At times, the German electricity grid is operating on a surplus! Yet another example is getting paid 150% of 200% during holidays such as Christmas (which is how it works in horeca). Fascinating discussion, but just being against social behaviour won't change these situations. There needs to be incentive. Being antisocial or being OK with that with the benefit of receiving a discount seems like a great way to achieve this in situations where it makes sense. Does anyone know examples where it'd make sense, but where it isn't currently applied? Or where it has been tried locally, but isn't implemented world-wide? If you take the toilet flush example: we're not paying for toilet usage in our households (right..?) but we are paying for water. If the price of water would be dynamic based on current demand, and the current demand is transparent, that could decrease demand during peak times just like the other examples do. At the very least, those who cause the congestion pay for it, and pay for the extra costs attached to the peak's effect. On a side note, the thought of highly fluctuating water prices sends shills down my spine.