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Ask HN: “Give the hardest job to the laziest person“

11 points by mlacks 7y ago

The saying goes “Always give the hardest job to the laziest person because they will find the easiest way to do it". What is the best real-life example to this you’ve seen?

mtmail 7y ago
Related https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ebp6ak/there_is_a_well_known_saying_that_goes_always/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ebp6ak/there_is_... from 2 days ago with 13.000 comments.
- psv1 7y ago
  "Related" = Where they copied from.
muzani 7y ago
Isn't this basically how startups work? I built a full app to 1000 users in 2 weeks, to first payment and 5000 users a month after that. Keto recipes where we'd sell substitution ingredients. Hardcoded the data. Didn't even have a shopping cart or payment gateway. We'd just query ordered items by the user phone number, and then give our bank details so that they could transfer. Eventually we fixed it in a few months. But it was sufficiently complex, lots of content, low margins, physical items, which I still think is pretty impressive to get off the ground in a couple of months.
- Japhy_Ryder 7y ago
  You mean you didn't use Neural Network Machine Learning APIs? For shame! J/k. That is a really kind of hilarious and impressive.
- muzani 7y ago
  Also after acquisition, we tried to do it 'properly', with an improved business model, experienced developers, project/product management team. It ended up getting overengineered and we killed the project a year later.
  - laksmanv 7y ago
    what is the app? I've been doing keto and would be interested to check it out
    - Japhy_Ryder 7y ago
      Uh, did you read the comment you replied to? > we killed the project a year later.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        That says "the project", not the app/business/company.
        muzani 7y ago
        Specifically, the original idea was split to two businesses - e-commerce order management and health/weight loss recipes/community. Both were killed.
    - muzani 7y ago
      Foodbits. It's down now but I doubt it'll help. We released it in one language, Malay, and it was mostly substitutions to SE Asian food.
gunshai 7y ago
This is an example of the opposite "hard problem" I was at a VERY EARLY startup that built telemetry and stored data. Anyway, the micro SD cards we purchased weren't formatted correctly. The CEO told me I had to get them all formatted. He was slightly pissed at me for something or other, the guy was a genius but consistently flew off the handle. I sat there looking at these racks of SD cards, there were more than 500 of these little fuckers to fumble with. I did a small test and figured I was getting 1 done every 30 seconds depending on how fast the format went ect. Holy fuck I thought is this what I'm really doing right now?! I said fuck, if i'm going to spend the next 4 hours doing this. I have a lot more important shit I want to do. So, first I looked up the SD card reader we had and checked the specs. I noticed that itself could format the SD cards. Next I called our firmware programmer and asked him how fast a rev would take to implement the functionality and give a rudimentary feedback that it was done and automatically perform the check during the boot sequence. He says ... " OH wow, not more than 30 minutes I imagine." I replied "Great! When can you have that to me?" "I'll send it over to you in an hour" click I then proceeded to bump his rev as the most recent firmware for our units that had to be eventually tested anyway and just walked away. Hours later the CEO comes in and asks me why I'm not reformatting them (you're probably wondering why he's being such a micro managing baby, early on when i worked there he took his stress out in bad ways it got better later though). I said I was done. He said he didn't believe me. I replied you're right I didn't do more than a few, because I made it so they'd all automatically do it going forward and that it'd be a good thing to have for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. I don't even remember his reaction because I think I just remember us staring at each other before he walked away, only to then come back and show him how it worked so it wouldn't surprise him on a field visit.
- firebones 7y ago
  Great story, although I really thought the punchline would be "Fast forward two years when a new firmware programmer took over, pushed a change that caused the rushed format detection to be skipped, and destroyed all our telemetry data on all readers."
thedevindevops 7y ago
It's a paraphrased Bill Gates quote isn't it? I always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, they find an easy way to do it?
smacktoward 7y ago
“I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.” -- General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, 1933 (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/)

11 points by mlacks 7y ago

The saying goes “Always give the hardest job to the laziest person because they will find the easiest way to do it". What is the best real-life example to this you’ve seen?

mtmail 7y ago

Related https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ebp6ak/there_is_a_well_known_saying_that_goes_always/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ebp6ak/there_is_... from 2 days ago with 13.000 comments.

psv1 7y ago
"Related" = Where they copied from.

muzani 7y ago

Isn't this basically how startups work? I built a full app to 1000 users in 2 weeks, to first payment and 5000 users a month after that. Keto recipes where we'd sell substitution ingredients. Hardcoded the data. Didn't even have a shopping cart or payment gateway. We'd just query ordered items by the user phone number, and then give our bank details so that they could transfer. Eventually we fixed it in a few months. But it was sufficiently complex, lots of content, low margins, physical items, which I still think is pretty impressive to get off the ground in a couple of months.

Japhy_Ryder 7y ago
You mean you didn't use Neural Network Machine Learning APIs? For shame! J/k. That is a really kind of hilarious and impressive.
muzani 7y ago
Also after acquisition, we tried to do it 'properly', with an improved business model, experienced developers, project/product management team. It ended up getting overengineered and we killed the project a year later.
- laksmanv 7y ago
  what is the app? I've been doing keto and would be interested to check it out
  - Japhy_Ryder 7y ago
    Uh, did you read the comment you replied to? > we killed the project a year later.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      That says "the project", not the app/business/company.
      - muzani 7y ago
        Specifically, the original idea was split to two businesses - e-commerce order management and health/weight loss recipes/community. Both were killed.
  - muzani 7y ago
    Foodbits. It's down now but I doubt it'll help. We released it in one language, Malay, and it was mostly substitutions to SE Asian food.

gunshai 7y ago

This is an example of the opposite "hard problem" I was at a VERY EARLY startup that built telemetry and stored data. Anyway, the micro SD cards we purchased weren't formatted correctly. The CEO told me I had to get them all formatted. He was slightly pissed at me for something or other, the guy was a genius but consistently flew off the handle. I sat there looking at these racks of SD cards, there were more than 500 of these little fuckers to fumble with. I did a small test and figured I was getting 1 done every 30 seconds depending on how fast the format went ect. Holy fuck I thought is this what I'm really doing right now?! I said fuck, if i'm going to spend the next 4 hours doing this. I have a lot more important shit I want to do. So, first I looked up the SD card reader we had and checked the specs. I noticed that itself could format the SD cards. Next I called our firmware programmer and asked him how fast a rev would take to implement the functionality and give a rudimentary feedback that it was done and automatically perform the check during the boot sequence. He says ... " OH wow, not more than 30 minutes I imagine." I replied "Great! When can you have that to me?" "I'll send it over to you in an hour" click I then proceeded to bump his rev as the most recent firmware for our units that had to be eventually tested anyway and just walked away. Hours later the CEO comes in and asks me why I'm not reformatting them (you're probably wondering why he's being such a micro managing baby, early on when i worked there he took his stress out in bad ways it got better later though). I said I was done. He said he didn't believe me. I replied you're right I didn't do more than a few, because I made it so they'd all automatically do it going forward and that it'd be a good thing to have for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. I don't even remember his reaction because I think I just remember us staring at each other before he walked away, only to then come back and show him how it worked so it wouldn't surprise him on a field visit.

firebones 7y ago
Great story, although I really thought the punchline would be "Fast forward two years when a new firmware programmer took over, pushed a change that caused the rushed format detection to be skipped, and destroyed all our telemetry data on all readers."

thedevindevops 7y ago

It's a paraphrased Bill Gates quote isn't it? I always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, they find an easy way to do it?

smacktoward 7y ago

“I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.” -- General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, 1933 (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/)