5 ms·

Just how many people do we need doing that job, anyway?

34 points by parsecs 6y ago

RunningDroid 6y ago
Note that this applies to grocery stores too. E.G.: some team members put product in the wrong location, or they don't FIFO product, or they don't check dates, etc.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Yeah you have to check these in places that don't have high turnover. It is actually better to go to busier stores b/c you get a better product. I've bought less frequently shopped items and always check dates b/c I've been burned a few times. I've always been able to return an expired item but it's annoying.
l0b0 6y ago
Interesting question, but how would you even get close to an accurate judgment of how many people it actually takes to get the job done globally? Maybe 10k is about right, especially to do a highly localized task with millions of customers split into groups with at least somewhat competing interests, like dog walkers and dog owners. Maybe those 10k are doing such a bad job that there's actually space for 100k people to build and run profitable businesses world-wide. Or maybe 10k people making $50k/y is better for the world than 100 people making $5M/y. Coming from a socialist country this sounds like the shared communist and capitalist goal of zero production waste: unachievable, top-down, and resulting in terrible products and services all round.
zxcmx 6y ago
Would it also be a good thing if we also limited the numbers of authors, poets and musicians in the world to the number "strictly necessary"? Why or why not? My take on it is that in the absence of omnipotent global co-ordination / allocation of resources that the "surplus" people are basically doing discovery. They are discovering the actual market size, exploring adjacent markets and all sorts of things about executing dog walking apps and apps in general etc. I don't know if these are "bullshit jobs" or not, I'm not even sure if dog walking apps are necessary at all, but I'm not sure how we all figure that out without a discovery process. I did enjoy the article, it made me think.
- fsociety 6y ago
  I had a slightly different read on the article’s conclusion - mostly because it doesn’t prescribe a solution to the issue. If you have 100K people building a service for dog walkers, and we only need 100 people to build that service.. you can end up at an interesting conclusion. If we had the means to provide people with a basic means of living, say shelter/food/water/safety-nets, then would 100K people be building that service for dog walkers? I think the answer is no. They’d be doing vastly different things with their time on this Earth. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I believe the article doesn’t prescribe a solution because there are many directions you could head from this observation.
  - zxcmx 6y ago
    On reflection, I agree with you. Making art is at least a largely voluntary activity, even if most songs will never be heard and most books will never be read. From this point of view the root cause of the problem is that some people have a lot more access to money than others and can compel others to be human props in their dream of founding and leading a dog-walking-app startup.
- user00012-ab 6y ago
  If it got rid of all the content farm creators and just left people that really wanted to create, then yes.
c22 6y ago
The 100 people most suited to writing and running dog walking apps are probably also the "best" at dozens of other similar tasks. Do these 100 people have the time to build and maintain a majority of all apps? If they do have time do they want to do it? Do we want them doing it? If not we'll have to fill some of these roles with people who aren't the best and inefficiency creeps in...
- wahern 6y ago
  Comparative advantage at work. (Pun accidental.)
eyelidlessness 6y ago
This is a problem caused by defining characteristics of the underlying economic system. In other words, the problem is capitalism (and semi-feudal pre-capitalism, and semi-feudal hybrid capitalism). If non-scarce resources were freely available, the only job people would need is resource acquisition and transport. Accounting for disability and uneven geographic distribution, the only mandate would be a shared responsibility to ensure free availability is also accessible and equitable. That mandate would be exceedingly minimal, and could be easily rotated to avoid recreating the same dynamic. With a wealth of free time, “workers” would be able to pursue whatever endeavors enrich their lives or the lives of others. But if we accept the premise that people must “earn” basic necessities that aren’t scarce, just concentrated “wealth”, we are guaranteed to reproduce wildly inefficient, life wasting, bounty destroying nonsense
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Love to get downvoted for saying that people shouldn’t have to do “bullshit jobs” to buy things they need to survive from people who hoard things they personally don’t need to survive
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Lol I guess HN thinks solving problems is cool if it’s technology doing the solving, but perfectly normal to have a handful of people accumulate vast amounts of stuff people need to survive and hold them hostage with make work to buy it back. Y’all ain’t that wealthy, most of you never will be. You’re selling yourself out too
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    You probably getting downvoted for uttering communist ideology. All systems should in theory try to maximise human potential be it capitalism or communism. Niether have worked. One system demands extreme efficiency and takes away the idea of liberty while the other provides us with choc chip ice cream and majority people a step away from destitute. Most countries and peoples dont use either in practice. Capitalist economies have a huge dollop of socialist policies and communist economies have a pigeon-load of capitalist policy for the simple reason that we are humans.
1290cc 6y ago
This reveals a lot about how technical people approach problems. Many times you're simply applying whole sum logic to a human and not considering that humans are soft and squishy. What happens when those 100 humans perfect for the task get sick? Maybe have children? What about life altering events or accidents? Divorce? Theft? Emotion? Government oversight or over reach? There are a million things that can whittle or impede that 100 people. Much like the film Gattaca who felt they had the perfect vision for who was perfect, life tends to disagree. In the 50's we all thought India was a backwater of poverty yet its yielding some of the worlds best problem solvers. These are all things that make it better for as many people as possible to focus on a problem and eventually we reach a better solution. It also fosters creative destruction as there're always new cultural takes on an issue that evolves over time. Was the vacuum cleaner solved when Electrolux was the dominate force? Or is it solved by Dysan? This is part of the fabric of life which makes debate so interesting.

34 points by parsecs 6y ago

Note that this applies to grocery stores too. E.G.: some team members put product in the wrong location, or they don't FIFO product, or they don't check dates, etc.

sjg007 6y ago
Yeah you have to check these in places that don't have high turnover. It is actually better to go to busier stores b/c you get a better product. I've bought less frequently shopped items and always check dates b/c I've been burned a few times. I've always been able to return an expired item but it's annoying.

l0b0 6y ago

Interesting question, but how would you even get close to an accurate judgment of how many people it actually takes to get the job done globally? Maybe 10k is about right, especially to do a highly localized task with millions of customers split into groups with at least somewhat competing interests, like dog walkers and dog owners. Maybe those 10k are doing such a bad job that there's actually space for 100k people to build and run profitable businesses world-wide. Or maybe 10k people making $50k/y is better for the world than 100 people making $5M/y. Coming from a socialist country this sounds like the shared communist and capitalist goal of zero production waste: unachievable, top-down, and resulting in terrible products and services all round.

zxcmx 6y ago

Would it also be a good thing if we also limited the numbers of authors, poets and musicians in the world to the number "strictly necessary"? Why or why not? My take on it is that in the absence of omnipotent global co-ordination / allocation of resources that the "surplus" people are basically doing discovery. They are discovering the actual market size, exploring adjacent markets and all sorts of things about executing dog walking apps and apps in general etc. I don't know if these are "bullshit jobs" or not, I'm not even sure if dog walking apps are necessary at all, but I'm not sure how we all figure that out without a discovery process. I did enjoy the article, it made me think.

fsociety 6y ago
I had a slightly different read on the article’s conclusion - mostly because it doesn’t prescribe a solution to the issue. If you have 100K people building a service for dog walkers, and we only need 100 people to build that service.. you can end up at an interesting conclusion. If we had the means to provide people with a basic means of living, say shelter/food/water/safety-nets, then would 100K people be building that service for dog walkers? I think the answer is no. They’d be doing vastly different things with their time on this Earth. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I believe the article doesn’t prescribe a solution because there are many directions you could head from this observation.
- zxcmx 6y ago
  On reflection, I agree with you. Making art is at least a largely voluntary activity, even if most songs will never be heard and most books will never be read. From this point of view the root cause of the problem is that some people have a lot more access to money than others and can compel others to be human props in their dream of founding and leading a dog-walking-app startup.
user00012-ab 6y ago
If it got rid of all the content farm creators and just left people that really wanted to create, then yes.

c22 6y ago

The 100 people most suited to writing and running dog walking apps are probably also the "best" at dozens of other similar tasks. Do these 100 people have the time to build and maintain a majority of all apps? If they do have time do they want to do it? Do we want them doing it? If not we'll have to fill some of these roles with people who aren't the best and inefficiency creeps in...

wahern 6y ago
Comparative advantage at work. (Pun accidental.)

eyelidlessness 6y ago

This is a problem caused by defining characteristics of the underlying economic system. In other words, the problem is capitalism (and semi-feudal pre-capitalism, and semi-feudal hybrid capitalism). If non-scarce resources were freely available, the only job people would need is resource acquisition and transport. Accounting for disability and uneven geographic distribution, the only mandate would be a shared responsibility to ensure free availability is also accessible and equitable. That mandate would be exceedingly minimal, and could be easily rotated to avoid recreating the same dynamic. With a wealth of free time, “workers” would be able to pursue whatever endeavors enrich their lives or the lives of others. But if we accept the premise that people must “earn” basic necessities that aren’t scarce, just concentrated “wealth”, we are guaranteed to reproduce wildly inefficient, life wasting, bounty destroying nonsense

eyelidlessness 6y ago
Love to get downvoted for saying that people shouldn’t have to do “bullshit jobs” to buy things they need to survive from people who hoard things they personally don’t need to survive
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Lol I guess HN thinks solving problems is cool if it’s technology doing the solving, but perfectly normal to have a handful of people accumulate vast amounts of stuff people need to survive and hold them hostage with make work to buy it back. Y’all ain’t that wealthy, most of you never will be. You’re selling yourself out too
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  You probably getting downvoted for uttering communist ideology. All systems should in theory try to maximise human potential be it capitalism or communism. Niether have worked. One system demands extreme efficiency and takes away the idea of liberty while the other provides us with choc chip ice cream and majority people a step away from destitute. Most countries and peoples dont use either in practice. Capitalist economies have a huge dollop of socialist policies and communist economies have a pigeon-load of capitalist policy for the simple reason that we are humans.

1290cc 6y ago

This reveals a lot about how technical people approach problems. Many times you're simply applying whole sum logic to a human and not considering that humans are soft and squishy. What happens when those 100 humans perfect for the task get sick? Maybe have children? What about life altering events or accidents? Divorce? Theft? Emotion? Government oversight or over reach? There are a million things that can whittle or impede that 100 people. Much like the film Gattaca who felt they had the perfect vision for who was perfect, life tends to disagree. In the 50's we all thought India was a backwater of poverty yet its yielding some of the worlds best problem solvers. These are all things that make it better for as many people as possible to focus on a problem and eventually we reach a better solution. It also fosters creative destruction as there're always new cultural takes on an issue that evolves over time. Was the vacuum cleaner solved when Electrolux was the dominate force? Or is it solved by Dysan? This is part of the fabric of life which makes debate so interesting.