4 ms·

So that's neat, but not what I was saying. This is completely the wrong way to think about division of labour. We started to figure this out 300 years ago for

So that's neat, but not what I was saying. This is completely the wrong way to think about division of labour. We started to figure this out 300 years ago for god's sake. It's not helpful think about our tasks as a series of bits of work to be accomplished that we hire spigot-workers to do. White collar work is mostly not labour in that sense. Thinking about your organization like a CPU doing calculations is utterly the wrong analogy. More like band, playing a song - most tasks have some level of optimal participation you don't want to be below or over, and/or it might be incrementally harder to improve quality depending on variables. And 'talent' usually matters more than anything.

hinkley 4y ago
We started to figure this out 12,000+ years ago at the dawn of civilization, when specializations finally show up in the archeological records. If you want to build a cart you need a woodworker and a couple of blacksmiths feeding your cartwright the proper materials. You’re right that five blacksmiths won’t get the cart built faster, but there’s a whole world of items, including in software, that are composites of anywhere from a handful to a hundred specialties. I don’t feel like you’ve countered my theory about the need for higher order creation. Someone somewhere had to look at how many musical instruments there were in the world and think, “composer” and “conductor”, which not only gave you a job but suddenly put a bunch of musicians to work.