3 ms·

There's a whole lot of conservatism driving it. I'm not talking about the political ideology, I'm talking about the basic idea of conserving the same way of doi

There's a whole lot of conservatism driving it. I'm not talking about the political ideology, I'm talking about the basic idea of conserving the same way of doing things "because that's what we've always done" or "it was good enough for our grandparents" or "why change what isn't broken" None of these things are good excuses to keep beating the same dead horse, that's not how progress is made. I also know that changing too many things at once can lead to issues so I'm not advocating for upending everything at once, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't start changing what needs to be changed. Perhaps this is just my perspective and we may not agree where that start lies.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
This conservatism of which you speak is just risk intolerance, or less charitably, an unwillingness to accept responsibility. We're stuck with old processes, byzantine committe review for simple things, expensive PE stamped drawings for a storm drain, all because nobody is willing to give it a try and be responsible for the result. And we actively crap on anyone who does want to give it a try as being reckless. Risk intolerance, diffusion of responsibly, things like that as an abstract concepts tends to thunderous applause around here. So maybe a mirror would help us solve the problem.
- pas 5y ago
  bias toward short term risk avoidance versus long term risk avoidance. (hence status quo bias, also "nobody got fired for buying IBM", etc.) what's needed is a meta-level risk budget and sane risk management, and in case of conservative industries (medicine, aviation, nuclear, blablabla) there should be a calculated and constant push to bias against stagnation, without fucking up the otherwise great safety record. (of course this usually means a bit more in costs of managing changes, but that should be looked at in the perspective of opportunity costs of not changing to better processes/technology/structure/etc.)
- ryandrake 5y ago
  I've always been curious about what the bureaucracy is actually doing that takes all this time. I would love to see an hour-by-hour breakdown. When my county says I need a permit to install a water heater or whatever, and that permit (a piece of paper, just to remind everyone) is going to take 6 months to make, I would LOVE to have a full work breakdown showing why this takes 6 months. What people are doing what actions at what times, where the critical path of typing this piece of paper ends in 6 months? I would love to know why it takes decades to build 5 miles of train tracks. What people are doing what actual activities in what order that adds up to 10+ years? When the execs at your software company asks you to explain a 3 week estimate to build a feature, you can sit down with your project manager, and build a GANNT chart or whatever, showing engineer A and engineer B doing design work for 1 week, implementation for another week, and testing the third week. In more detail, you could break down every team member's time spent by the hour actually writing docs, typing in code, waiting for it to compile, organizing field testing, and so on, and you can show exactly what physical activities result in the 3 week estimate. I suspect if government agencies (or big companies) were required to produce an hour-by-hour breakdown of what individual people physically did through a project, you'd see a lot of "blocked on other team A finishing project B" or "waiting for executive Y to sign document Z" and also a lot of "picking my nose or playing golf, not doing my job."
  - alan-hn 5y ago
    I think this sort of transparency would be good for governing institutions. It would be far easier for the populace to hold them accountable

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

This conservatism of which you speak is just risk intolerance, or less charitably, an unwillingness to accept responsibility. We're stuck with old processes, byzantine committe review for simple things, expensive PE stamped drawings for a storm drain, all because nobody is willing to give it a try and be responsible for the result. And we actively crap on anyone who does want to give it a try as being reckless. Risk intolerance, diffusion of responsibly, things like that as an abstract concepts tends to thunderous applause around here. So maybe a mirror would help us solve the problem.

pas 5y ago
bias toward short term risk avoidance versus long term risk avoidance. (hence status quo bias, also "nobody got fired for buying IBM", etc.) what's needed is a meta-level risk budget and sane risk management, and in case of conservative industries (medicine, aviation, nuclear, blablabla) there should be a calculated and constant push to bias against stagnation, without fucking up the otherwise great safety record. (of course this usually means a bit more in costs of managing changes, but that should be looked at in the perspective of opportunity costs of not changing to better processes/technology/structure/etc.)
ryandrake 5y ago
I've always been curious about what the bureaucracy is actually doing that takes all this time. I would love to see an hour-by-hour breakdown. When my county says I need a permit to install a water heater or whatever, and that permit (a piece of paper, just to remind everyone) is going to take 6 months to make, I would LOVE to have a full work breakdown showing why this takes 6 months. What people are doing what actions at what times, where the critical path of typing this piece of paper ends in 6 months? I would love to know why it takes decades to build 5 miles of train tracks. What people are doing what actual activities in what order that adds up to 10+ years? When the execs at your software company asks you to explain a 3 week estimate to build a feature, you can sit down with your project manager, and build a GANNT chart or whatever, showing engineer A and engineer B doing design work for 1 week, implementation for another week, and testing the third week. In more detail, you could break down every team member's time spent by the hour actually writing docs, typing in code, waiting for it to compile, organizing field testing, and so on, and you can show exactly what physical activities result in the 3 week estimate. I suspect if government agencies (or big companies) were required to produce an hour-by-hour breakdown of what individual people physically did through a project, you'd see a lot of "blocked on other team A finishing project B" or "waiting for executive Y to sign document Z" and also a lot of "picking my nose or playing golf, not doing my job."
- alan-hn 5y ago
  I think this sort of transparency would be good for governing institutions. It would be far easier for the populace to hold them accountable