5 ms·

The tone of this comment is unduly negative, but I agree that they should be hiring folks with relevant experience. Ag mechanization is a well established degre

The tone of this comment is unduly negative, but I agree that they should be hiring folks with relevant experience. Ag mechanization is a well established degree, combine harvesters and augers exist, etc.

hinkley 4y ago
We talk about this at least once a week here, usually in the scope of software, but it’s a problem that exists in other domains (though VCs and us are constantly pushing for more businesses to run like software, which is nuts considering how not in order we know our own house to be). Ageism and cultishness are how you end up with simple oversights that anyone who has been around the block a few times would either prevent, or at least have enough self consciousness not to breathlessly talk about it in front of strangers. I think what we miss consistently about the VC model is that we make the 10:1 ratio about chance and betting big, but I suspect the dominant force there is that 4 times out of 5, experience will save you from doing something expensively stupid. However once in a while it’s a clever generalist or someone who “doesn’t know any better” that uncovers a major advancement that the experienced people are blind to. So less than half of those failures are not thinking outside of the box, and most of the rest are not even knowing there was a box to begin with. We tend to see this as an either or scenario. Throw a bunch of kids together or hire a bunch of cranky old men and women who say no all the time. That’s a false dichotomy. Hire some of both, don’t let the older ones steal all of the glory.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  This is mostly a cultural problem. Some professions will readily say "imma keep my mouth shut because this is not my area of expertise" whereas every software engineer is a subject matter on everything up to and including open ended and subjective questions that humans have been trying to conclusively answer all of history. (The various types of mechanical engineers are nearly as bad.) One could argue that the cultural problem is just a reflection of a demographics problem but I don't care enough about that aspect to make that argument. As an aside, the failure in TFA doesn't sound that dramatic. Seems like the age old tale of a customer running material handling equipment at the edge of it's comfortable range and an tech needing to be flown out to tell them where to slap vibrators on it or what other minor change needed to be made in order to make it work better. Yeah, they probably should have seen this coming and shipped a more flexible solution or at least have had shovel ready options that didn't involve flying engineers out but whatever, it's a prototype and this stuff happens.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    I belatedly figured out that my whole style of learning is based entirely on model building and testing, similar to what scientists do when they are exploring a new phenomenon. I keep meaning to look around for research on whether this is common to all autodidacts, just one mode, or if I’m rare. The upshot of this is that I seem to be able to avoid the Expert Beginner trap and get into more of an Expert Journeyman, which is somewhat more useful and less dangerous. I’m often deputized to take over things I don’t actually know all that well, because I’m seen as having some knack for playing twenty questions and then being able to improvise reasonably well without running back to the delegator every fifteen minutes, or setting the building on fire for fear of asking for clarification when it’s warranted. I am also pretty mechanically inclined, took a lot of things apart and back together, including but not limited to bicycles I’ve subsequently taken above 40 mph (like cars, there are many kinds of defects that only show up at 2x “normal” speed, because forces tend to quadruple). Software people who know hardware of some sort are, at least in my experience, generally safer about trying to defy the laws of physics. But the danger with model testing is that I often sound like I know exactly what I’m talking about when I don’t (and sound too similar when I actually am the expert, so people either trust me too much or not enough). I’ve played with various levels of wiggle words and uncertain phrasing to try to fix this, always with mixed results. Sometimes even stating it as an educated guess, based on X and Y, causes other people to agree that sounds perfectly correct even if it’s not (one of the original definitions of a meme). Sometimes I avoid that trap of not believing my own model in my head, even if I don’t let on, sometimes I don’t. I should probably have more care about others aping my demeanor, but I tend to mentor anyone who is comfortable asking clarifying questions. It’s the ones that want to fake it til they make it that I can’t help. The danger is, as always, in believing your own PR. Questioning it constantly is paralyzing and exhausting, both for yourself and for observers (especially the exhausting part). Questioning it not at all is exquisitely dangerous.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    If you are in software you have to be an expert in some other domain. Sure there are a few os and compiler writers who can sit in pure software land (even they need to know some about hardware). Pretty much everything else is for some other domain and so you need to know it.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it creates cool new solutions to old problems, other times it spends 100x the money on problems solved 100 years ago (And does a worse job at it too) The real reason self driving cars will ultimately fail is they’re being designed and tested in places like Palo Alto where it doesn’t even rain half the year and a pothole is a thing of legend from lands far away.
  - pkrein 4y ago
    Want to come show us how it's done? :)
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      My email is my username @gmail.com I might be able to do some consulting.
  - a_c 4y ago
    On self driving car, I think we are solving all the problems caused by cars like air pollution and congestion with "better" car. First we have electric car, then we (will) have electric self driving car. Public transport seems boring enough that no one talks about. Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains (and bike too) compared with cars? While we moved pass the faster horse era, we are now searching for better cars.
    - galdosdi 4y ago
      1) Public transport works today. True self driving is an unknown amount of time away, and IMHO it is a foolish mistake to assume it is definitely very soon or definitely very long before it works. It could be a year away or decades. 2) Even with self driving, there would be some efficiency gains from a bus, especially in places dense enough that there just isn't space for a car per person, like Manhattan. It would take adding something like 50 lanes of highway across the Hudson River to replace the capacity that trains currently provide for people to enter Manhattan from the mainland, IIRC. Neither electricity nor self driving in any way reduce the amount of space a car takes up. In fact self driving increases traffic by making it easier to go for a drive -- perhaps even send a car out for a 0 passenger cargo pickup trip. Public transit is here to stay.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  You have literally described how Tesla(and the other Musk companies) have made both an excellent and terrible product at the same time. A big chunk of the Musk skeptic community consist of experienced professionals from all the industries that Elon is involved in. They are constantly bashing his companies for not paying attention to what has already been accomplished. Musk has had many failures due to ignoring the previously made mistakes that people before him have already made. For example: Fit and finish, organizing your production process so you are not forced to build $50k cars in a tent in the parking lot, following proven practices for service etc. At the same time, teardowns of the cars are showing a lot of out of the box thinking that other incumbent automakers are not following. Things such as eliminating redundant systems with newer designs that can do multiple tasks, making parts modular enough such that you don't have to wait for a new model year to implement, the megacastings etc. In the end, Tesla has only survived because they had enough capital to make these new ideas stick and now others are starting to have to copy his company's accomplishments. So maybe as long as you have enough capital, then it may be worth to "relearn" everything that everyone else has learned because it may lead to asking "why" on some of the old ways of doing things.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    A similar story happened with digital cameras. A few of the film companies practically went out of business before the electronics got sorted out and what differentiated the good from the bad cameras circled back to the mechanical parts, which the incumbents had locked down ages ago. The pure digital play companies faded and some were acquired, and one day Nikon or Canon had the best DSLR system.
    - nebula8804 4y ago
      Thats unfortunate. What if there are certain aspects to existing cameras that are only there because a lesson was learned in the past but is no longer ideal in todays context. If there are no new comers that have the cash to burn to 're-evaluate' how everything is done today then we are missing out on potential innovations. This process is like re-factoring old code but in real life.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  And change/difference for the sake of change/difference
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Everything in moderation. I do occasionally argue to let someone change something that doesn’t really need to be changed because it makes them happy. If they’re happy they’ll stay longer, or at least be less cranky the next time some random top-tier bullshit happens. Throw stress at someone whose fun you’ve completely sucked away and see how far that gets you. The trick is to find something they can fiddle with without ruining everyone else’s fun in the process. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s a riddle.
vondur 4y ago
I don't think it's that negative. They clearly should have brought in people with relevant experience in the field before implementing the system. How much money and time did they waste fixing their system to account for Corn Cobs?

hinkley 4y ago

We talk about this at least once a week here, usually in the scope of software, but it’s a problem that exists in other domains (though VCs and us are constantly pushing for more businesses to run like software, which is nuts considering how not in order we know our own house to be). Ageism and cultishness are how you end up with simple oversights that anyone who has been around the block a few times would either prevent, or at least have enough self consciousness not to breathlessly talk about it in front of strangers. I think what we miss consistently about the VC model is that we make the 10:1 ratio about chance and betting big, but I suspect the dominant force there is that 4 times out of 5, experience will save you from doing something expensively stupid. However once in a while it’s a clever generalist or someone who “doesn’t know any better” that uncovers a major advancement that the experienced people are blind to. So less than half of those failures are not thinking outside of the box, and most of the rest are not even knowing there was a box to begin with. We tend to see this as an either or scenario. Throw a bunch of kids together or hire a bunch of cranky old men and women who say no all the time. That’s a false dichotomy. Hire some of both, don’t let the older ones steal all of the glory.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
This is mostly a cultural problem. Some professions will readily say "imma keep my mouth shut because this is not my area of expertise" whereas every software engineer is a subject matter on everything up to and including open ended and subjective questions that humans have been trying to conclusively answer all of history. (The various types of mechanical engineers are nearly as bad.) One could argue that the cultural problem is just a reflection of a demographics problem but I don't care enough about that aspect to make that argument. As an aside, the failure in TFA doesn't sound that dramatic. Seems like the age old tale of a customer running material handling equipment at the edge of it's comfortable range and an tech needing to be flown out to tell them where to slap vibrators on it or what other minor change needed to be made in order to make it work better. Yeah, they probably should have seen this coming and shipped a more flexible solution or at least have had shovel ready options that didn't involve flying engineers out but whatever, it's a prototype and this stuff happens.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I belatedly figured out that my whole style of learning is based entirely on model building and testing, similar to what scientists do when they are exploring a new phenomenon. I keep meaning to look around for research on whether this is common to all autodidacts, just one mode, or if I’m rare. The upshot of this is that I seem to be able to avoid the Expert Beginner trap and get into more of an Expert Journeyman, which is somewhat more useful and less dangerous. I’m often deputized to take over things I don’t actually know all that well, because I’m seen as having some knack for playing twenty questions and then being able to improvise reasonably well without running back to the delegator every fifteen minutes, or setting the building on fire for fear of asking for clarification when it’s warranted. I am also pretty mechanically inclined, took a lot of things apart and back together, including but not limited to bicycles I’ve subsequently taken above 40 mph (like cars, there are many kinds of defects that only show up at 2x “normal” speed, because forces tend to quadruple). Software people who know hardware of some sort are, at least in my experience, generally safer about trying to defy the laws of physics. But the danger with model testing is that I often sound like I know exactly what I’m talking about when I don’t (and sound too similar when I actually am the expert, so people either trust me too much or not enough). I’ve played with various levels of wiggle words and uncertain phrasing to try to fix this, always with mixed results. Sometimes even stating it as an educated guess, based on X and Y, causes other people to agree that sounds perfectly correct even if it’s not (one of the original definitions of a meme). Sometimes I avoid that trap of not believing my own model in my head, even if I don’t let on, sometimes I don’t. I should probably have more care about others aping my demeanor, but I tend to mentor anyone who is comfortable asking clarifying questions. It’s the ones that want to fake it til they make it that I can’t help. The danger is, as always, in believing your own PR. Questioning it constantly is paralyzing and exhausting, both for yourself and for observers (especially the exhausting part). Questioning it not at all is exquisitely dangerous.
- bluGill 4y ago
  If you are in software you have to be an expert in some other domain. Sure there are a few os and compiler writers who can sit in pure software land (even they need to know some about hardware). Pretty much everything else is for some other domain and so you need to know it.
colechristensen 4y ago
They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it creates cool new solutions to old problems, other times it spends 100x the money on problems solved 100 years ago (And does a worse job at it too) The real reason self driving cars will ultimately fail is they’re being designed and tested in places like Palo Alto where it doesn’t even rain half the year and a pothole is a thing of legend from lands far away.
- pkrein 4y ago
  Want to come show us how it's done? :)
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    My email is my username @gmail.com I might be able to do some consulting.
- a_c 4y ago
  On self driving car, I think we are solving all the problems caused by cars like air pollution and congestion with "better" car. First we have electric car, then we (will) have electric self driving car. Public transport seems boring enough that no one talks about. Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains (and bike too) compared with cars? While we moved pass the faster horse era, we are now searching for better cars.
  - galdosdi 4y ago
    1) Public transport works today. True self driving is an unknown amount of time away, and IMHO it is a foolish mistake to assume it is definitely very soon or definitely very long before it works. It could be a year away or decades. 2) Even with self driving, there would be some efficiency gains from a bus, especially in places dense enough that there just isn't space for a car per person, like Manhattan. It would take adding something like 50 lanes of highway across the Hudson River to replace the capacity that trains currently provide for people to enter Manhattan from the mainland, IIRC. Neither electricity nor self driving in any way reduce the amount of space a car takes up. In fact self driving increases traffic by making it easier to go for a drive -- perhaps even send a car out for a 0 passenger cargo pickup trip. Public transit is here to stay.
nebula8804 4y ago
You have literally described how Tesla(and the other Musk companies) have made both an excellent and terrible product at the same time. A big chunk of the Musk skeptic community consist of experienced professionals from all the industries that Elon is involved in. They are constantly bashing his companies for not paying attention to what has already been accomplished. Musk has had many failures due to ignoring the previously made mistakes that people before him have already made. For example: Fit and finish, organizing your production process so you are not forced to build $50k cars in a tent in the parking lot, following proven practices for service etc. At the same time, teardowns of the cars are showing a lot of out of the box thinking that other incumbent automakers are not following. Things such as eliminating redundant systems with newer designs that can do multiple tasks, making parts modular enough such that you don't have to wait for a new model year to implement, the megacastings etc. In the end, Tesla has only survived because they had enough capital to make these new ideas stick and now others are starting to have to copy his company's accomplishments. So maybe as long as you have enough capital, then it may be worth to "relearn" everything that everyone else has learned because it may lead to asking "why" on some of the old ways of doing things.
- hinkley 4y ago
  A similar story happened with digital cameras. A few of the film companies practically went out of business before the electronics got sorted out and what differentiated the good from the bad cameras circled back to the mechanical parts, which the incumbents had locked down ages ago. The pure digital play companies faded and some were acquired, and one day Nikon or Canon had the best DSLR system.
  - nebula8804 4y ago
    Thats unfortunate. What if there are certain aspects to existing cameras that are only there because a lesson was learned in the past but is no longer ideal in todays context. If there are no new comers that have the cash to burn to 're-evaluate' how everything is done today then we are missing out on potential innovations. This process is like re-factoring old code but in real life.
iancmceachern 4y ago
And change/difference for the sake of change/difference
- hinkley 4y ago
  Everything in moderation. I do occasionally argue to let someone change something that doesn’t really need to be changed because it makes them happy. If they’re happy they’ll stay longer, or at least be less cranky the next time some random top-tier bullshit happens. Throw stress at someone whose fun you’ve completely sucked away and see how far that gets you. The trick is to find something they can fiddle with without ruining everyone else’s fun in the process. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s a riddle.

vondur 4y ago

I don't think it's that negative. They clearly should have brought in people with relevant experience in the field before implementing the system. How much money and time did they waste fixing their system to account for Corn Cobs?