4 ms·
It isn't just relationships and momentum. XKCD had an interesting what if -- what would happen if a bowling ball was blown up to the size of Earth?[1] Turns out
by coffeemug 8y ago
It isn't just relationships and momentum. XKCD had an interesting what if -- what would happen if a bowling ball was blown up to the size of Earth?[1] Turns out at that scale metal behaves like a liquid.
Work at big companies is kind of like that. Once a company gets big enough, any given person doesn't really know anything. Seemingly no one is doing anything productive -- it's meetings all the way down. But the software still gets shipped. It doesn't happen the same way it happens at a startup where someone sits down and codes a feature. It happens in a totally different way, where one hundred engineers go to meetings all day and talk to QA and analytics and bizdev, and maybe commit one line of broken code a week. It takes way more people, and the production process is totally different, and it takes way longer, but stuff still happens (often quite successfully).
[1] https://what-if.xkcd.com/46/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/46/
- cpeterso 8y agoI read (circa 2000) that IBM's product development processes would need nine months to ship a product that was just an empty box.
- blihp 8y agoThat was probably referencing the story of the origin of the IBM PC. This anecdote was given as the reason they got the green light to develop the PC in Boca Raton independent of the rest of IBM.
- teddyh 8y ago> Turns out at that scale metal behaves like a liquid. From xkcd: > On that scale, the polymers in the bowling ball would behave more like a liquid So polymers, not metal.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoThen again, I've seen it repeated (though would appreciate someone backing it up with a citation) that on planetary scales, everything behaves like a high-viscosity liquid. That was in context of modeling e.g. moons hitting planets.
- taneq 8y agoIsn't that part of the definition of a planet? ie. that it flows into a spherical shape?
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIt seems to be, yes. [0] cites IAU definition, which mentions "hydrostatic equilibrium", suggesting at this level things are viewed through the lens of fluid mechanics. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#2006_IAU_definition_of_planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#2006_IAU_definition_of_...
- bengale 8y agoThis is my experience so far, I've been waiting for this place to implode for two years. Somehow we ship enough to tick boxes in the spreadsheets, and enough that customers aren't forced to leave (although they aren't happy). It's really weird, and a hellish place to work, but they pay well.
- jiveturkey 8y ago> Seemingly no one is doing anything productive -- it's meetings all the way down. lol please tell me you invented this