5 ms·

Pareto's law really isn't a law. You think that the world is full of situations where 80% of the payoff comes from 20% of the work/complexity/whatever? I tell

by gyulai 4y ago

Pareto's law really isn't a law. You think that the world is full of situations where 80% of the payoff comes from 20% of the work/complexity/whatever? I tell you that, equally, the world is full of situations where you get 0% of the payoff unless you've done 100% of the work. That latter observation is just as true as the former, but it won't make anyone into a best-selling business book author or motivational speaker, as it doesn't help with cognitive dissonance reduction when reflecting upon laziness and ineptitude, as Pareto's law does.

musingsole 4y ago
But I only enjoy 20% of the work...so there must be a way to make that the only part I have to do and still get a promotion!
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  This is a Problem with a lot of software developers, leading to interesting developments like microservices.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Oh, optimizing for promotions (or $$ generally) and optimizing for doing a good job are frequently not the same optimization. Beginning with your choice of where to work and going on from there.
mkl95 4y ago
A better made up law is that, given a complex enough product, simplicity is inversely proportional to the underlying complexity. An Airbus A380 is a long shaft with windows and wings, etc. This only applies to non brutalist design though.
Yujf 4y ago
Also you can make software that does what you need it to do, but feels bad to use because it is not polished because that 20% was not deemed important.
tresil 4y ago
> …the world is full of situations where you get 0% of the payoff unless you've done 100% of the work. Well stated. Deep down I’ve known this to be true, but since Pareto’s law is often over used, it’s easy to lose sight of other aspects of reality. This one is often overlooked. Judgement must be used to understand how these two concepts can apply to a given situation or decision.
gw98 4y ago
I think it's more that 80% of the work is unnecessary. There is so much waste in software engineering it's embarrassing.
- temporallobe 4y ago
  Every time I do `npm install` I am reminded of this. Why do I need 32,127 libraries again?
  - gw98 4y ago
    I have solved this by refusing to use anything involving node or npm. We had one project kick off with that and it was a lesson in supply chain attacks within a week.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Because if you "waste" a week writing something yourself, nice & lean, you'll be told you've fallen for NIH and probably YAGNI as well, and get your hand slapped. But if you introduce a 3,500-strong dependency tree that'll waste a person-month spread across the team, over a year, plus make the product perform worse and waste god-knows how many person years for your users, to do the same thing... nobody complains as long as whatever you imported has lots of github stars and (ideally) looks good on a résumé. Repeat for several decisions and soon you have tens of thousands of deps.
orangepurple 4y ago
Pareto is generally framed as a principle not a law Difference between principle and law: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/94475 https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/94475
samatman 4y ago
The Pareto principle is a principle, not a law, agreed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle The conflation being at the root of most of what you said is unfortunate: Pareto's law would indeed be a bad law, if it existed. Yes, I think the world is full of situations where 80% of the payoff comes from 20% of the work. I'd even be cheeky and say that the Pareto principle applies to about 80% of situations.
- xcambar 4y ago
  So for 20% of the situations, you have to do more than 20% of the work to get 80% or less of the payoff?
dahart 4y ago
The Pareto Principle is just a kind of byproduct of variation in distributions, it may fall naturally out of a normal distribution and/or a Pareto distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution) and/or Zipf’s law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law), which are all in fact very common in reality, and why the Pareto thing is frequently approximately correct has been observed by many. Distributions of behavior that are perfectly flat like you suggest might exist, but are less common in large populations or samples. Do we have any names/principles/laws relating to flat distributions in nature or human behavior? I’m curious if you could give some examples of what you’re thinking of, the situations where there’s 0 payoff until all the work is done, and what basis there is for claiming this is equally true and common as varied distributions?
- rogersnm 4y ago
  > I’m curious if you could give some examples of what you’re thinking of, the situations where there’s 0 payoff until all the work is done Not op, but surgery strikes me as an example where there's effectively 0 pay-off until you finish everything. I personally wouldn't want the surgeon to sack it off without sewing me back up.
  - dahart 4y ago
    It surely depends on exactly what surgery we’re talking about, but surgery has lots and lots of known variation. Open brain and heart surgery might be good examples of what you’re talking about, but surgery in general is one of the best examples of non-flat distributions with non-binary outcomes. Some surgeries can be abandoned in the middle without stitching the patient, and some people will survive even if most die. Heard a fun podcast just yesterday about fistulated stomachs and the stories of a couple of different people who’ve had them. Surgeons can do a mediocre job stitching and fail to clean everything and there will be a mix of outcomes. They can do a perfect job, and most people will live, but still a few will die anyway.
- aGHz 4y ago
  The minimum viable product concept comes to mind. You don't have a product until you invest the effort required to pass the minimum threshold. Another example I can think of is escape velocity. I'd venture that the principle you're asking for is "phase change", where a threshold gates a drastic change in behavior.
dkarl 4y ago
> I tell you that, equally, the world is full of situations where you get 0% of the payoff unless you've done 100% of the work. It depends on your perspective. For a lot of those 100% situations, you could think up some high-effort, low-payoff bells and whistles to turn it into a 80%/20% situation.
softwarebeware 4y ago
> Pareto's law really isn't a law. No "law" of software or business is technically a law in the same rigorous sense that a scientific law is. But that's not why we call them laws and it would be nitpicking to call that out, besides entirely missing the point. Also, it's actually the Pareto Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) not "Pareto's Law" but that's also nitpicking.

by gyulai 4y ago

musingsole 4y ago

But I only enjoy 20% of the work...so there must be a way to make that the only part I have to do and still get a promotion!

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
This is a Problem with a lot of software developers, leading to interesting developments like microservices.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Oh, optimizing for promotions (or $$ generally) and optimizing for doing a good job are frequently not the same optimization. Beginning with your choice of where to work and going on from there.

mkl95 4y ago

A better made up law is that, given a complex enough product, simplicity is inversely proportional to the underlying complexity. An Airbus A380 is a long shaft with windows and wings, etc. This only applies to non brutalist design though.

Yujf 4y ago

Also you can make software that does what you need it to do, but feels bad to use because it is not polished because that 20% was not deemed important.

tresil 4y ago

> …the world is full of situations where you get 0% of the payoff unless you've done 100% of the work. Well stated. Deep down I’ve known this to be true, but since Pareto’s law is often over used, it’s easy to lose sight of other aspects of reality. This one is often overlooked. Judgement must be used to understand how these two concepts can apply to a given situation or decision.

gw98 4y ago

I think it's more that 80% of the work is unnecessary. There is so much waste in software engineering it's embarrassing.

temporallobe 4y ago
Every time I do `npm install` I am reminded of this. Why do I need 32,127 libraries again?
- gw98 4y ago
  I have solved this by refusing to use anything involving node or npm. We had one project kick off with that and it was a lesson in supply chain attacks within a week.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Because if you "waste" a week writing something yourself, nice & lean, you'll be told you've fallen for NIH and probably YAGNI as well, and get your hand slapped. But if you introduce a 3,500-strong dependency tree that'll waste a person-month spread across the team, over a year, plus make the product perform worse and waste god-knows how many person years for your users, to do the same thing... nobody complains as long as whatever you imported has lots of github stars and (ideally) looks good on a résumé. Repeat for several decisions and soon you have tens of thousands of deps.

orangepurple 4y ago

Pareto is generally framed as a principle not a law Difference between principle and law: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/94475 https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/94475

samatman 4y ago

The Pareto principle is a principle, not a law, agreed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle The conflation being at the root of most of what you said is unfortunate: Pareto's law would indeed be a bad law, if it existed. Yes, I think the world is full of situations where 80% of the payoff comes from 20% of the work. I'd even be cheeky and say that the Pareto principle applies to about 80% of situations.

xcambar 4y ago
So for 20% of the situations, you have to do more than 20% of the work to get 80% or less of the payoff?

dahart 4y ago

The Pareto Principle is just a kind of byproduct of variation in distributions, it may fall naturally out of a normal distribution and/or a Pareto distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution) and/or Zipf’s law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law), which are all in fact very common in reality, and why the Pareto thing is frequently approximately correct has been observed by many. Distributions of behavior that are perfectly flat like you suggest might exist, but are less common in large populations or samples. Do we have any names/principles/laws relating to flat distributions in nature or human behavior? I’m curious if you could give some examples of what you’re thinking of, the situations where there’s 0 payoff until all the work is done, and what basis there is for claiming this is equally true and common as varied distributions?

rogersnm 4y ago
> I’m curious if you could give some examples of what you’re thinking of, the situations where there’s 0 payoff until all the work is done Not op, but surgery strikes me as an example where there's effectively 0 pay-off until you finish everything. I personally wouldn't want the surgeon to sack it off without sewing me back up.
- dahart 4y ago
  It surely depends on exactly what surgery we’re talking about, but surgery has lots and lots of known variation. Open brain and heart surgery might be good examples of what you’re talking about, but surgery in general is one of the best examples of non-flat distributions with non-binary outcomes. Some surgeries can be abandoned in the middle without stitching the patient, and some people will survive even if most die. Heard a fun podcast just yesterday about fistulated stomachs and the stories of a couple of different people who’ve had them. Surgeons can do a mediocre job stitching and fail to clean everything and there will be a mix of outcomes. They can do a perfect job, and most people will live, but still a few will die anyway.
aGHz 4y ago
The minimum viable product concept comes to mind. You don't have a product until you invest the effort required to pass the minimum threshold. Another example I can think of is escape velocity. I'd venture that the principle you're asking for is "phase change", where a threshold gates a drastic change in behavior.

dkarl 4y ago

> I tell you that, equally, the world is full of situations where you get 0% of the payoff unless you've done 100% of the work. It depends on your perspective. For a lot of those 100% situations, you could think up some high-effort, low-payoff bells and whistles to turn it into a 80%/20% situation.

softwarebeware 4y ago

> Pareto's law really isn't a law. No "law" of software or business is technically a law in the same rigorous sense that a scientific law is. But that's not why we call them laws and it would be nitpicking to call that out, besides entirely missing the point. Also, it's actually the Pareto Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) not "Pareto's Law" but that's also nitpicking.