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This may explain why lawyers are motivated to stir things up, rather than settle them. They're motivated by the wrong metric. As an Engineer, I sell my time by

This may explain why lawyers are motivated to stir things up, rather than settle them. They're motivated by the wrong metric. As an Engineer, I sell my time by the hour too. No different than the lawyer. Yet I try to finish things efficiently. Huh.

nickelcitymario 6y ago
> As an Engineer, I sell my time by the hour too. As in you literally bill for hours, and the more hours you work, the more you get paid? Most programmers that I know (which is obviously not a great metric) either get paid a salary (which is divorced from actual hours worked) or they get paid by the hour but have no say over how many hours they will. In both cases, time is independent from productivity. Therefor, there's no harm (and really only benefits) to coding efficiently. But if you a) control how much time you work (like lawyers do, to an extent), and b) get paid for your time, then yes the incentives are setup to encourage you to be inefficient. Completely agreed.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I’m guessing they’re an independent contractor or freelancer of some sort.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Yup
    - nickelcitymario 6y ago
      And that's great! But there's a reason I used qualifiers like "most", not "all". If you bill by the hour, there's a reasonable (but not necessarily correct or optimal) case to be made for measuring your productivity in terms of billable hours. But it makes zero sense to do so if your hours are disconnected from the economic activity that results from your work. In such cases, it would be completely arbitrary to measure hours and call that a measure of productivity. Just as arbitrary as lines of code.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  >As in you literally bill for hours, and the more hours you work, the more you get paid? that's the way I do it. >then yes the incentives are setup to encourage you to be inefficient. I'm pretty sure if I was inefficient I would lose the job and thus not make as much money as I would otherwise.
tibbar 6y ago
Paradoxically, if you optimize for billable hours on your first job, you might never get to that highly-compensated 100th job. A selection effect of sorts.
wahern 6y ago
> This may explain why lawyers are motivated to stir things up, rather than settle them. They're motivated by the wrong metric Most lawyers I know have many clients and are swamped with work. They have little incentive to "stir things up". It's similar with accountants and plumbers in my city. They aren't trying to make more work for themselves because they already have their hands full. But in regional markets where supply isn't so constrained relative to demand then, sure, there's an incentive to make-work once you've wrangled a client, just as with any other profession.
smabie 6y ago
I'm sure lawyers think they try and settle things efficiently as well. The software engineering profession is riff with wasted work: rewrites, new bullshit services and tech, insanely complex clustering and cloud deployments, etc.

nickelcitymario 6y ago

> As an Engineer, I sell my time by the hour too. As in you literally bill for hours, and the more hours you work, the more you get paid? Most programmers that I know (which is obviously not a great metric) either get paid a salary (which is divorced from actual hours worked) or they get paid by the hour but have no say over how many hours they will. In both cases, time is independent from productivity. Therefor, there's no harm (and really only benefits) to coding efficiently. But if you a) control how much time you work (like lawyers do, to an extent), and b) get paid for your time, then yes the incentives are setup to encourage you to be inefficient. Completely agreed.

the_only_law 6y ago
I’m guessing they’re an independent contractor or freelancer of some sort.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Yup
  - nickelcitymario 6y ago
    And that's great! But there's a reason I used qualifiers like "most", not "all". If you bill by the hour, there's a reasonable (but not necessarily correct or optimal) case to be made for measuring your productivity in terms of billable hours. But it makes zero sense to do so if your hours are disconnected from the economic activity that results from your work. In such cases, it would be completely arbitrary to measure hours and call that a measure of productivity. Just as arbitrary as lines of code.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>As in you literally bill for hours, and the more hours you work, the more you get paid? that's the way I do it. >then yes the incentives are setup to encourage you to be inefficient. I'm pretty sure if I was inefficient I would lose the job and thus not make as much money as I would otherwise.

tibbar 6y ago

Paradoxically, if you optimize for billable hours on your first job, you might never get to that highly-compensated 100th job. A selection effect of sorts.

wahern 6y ago

> This may explain why lawyers are motivated to stir things up, rather than settle them. They're motivated by the wrong metric Most lawyers I know have many clients and are swamped with work. They have little incentive to "stir things up". It's similar with accountants and plumbers in my city. They aren't trying to make more work for themselves because they already have their hands full. But in regional markets where supply isn't so constrained relative to demand then, sure, there's an incentive to make-work once you've wrangled a client, just as with any other profession.

smabie 6y ago

I'm sure lawyers think they try and settle things efficiently as well. The software engineering profession is riff with wasted work: rewrites, new bullshit services and tech, insanely complex clustering and cloud deployments, etc.