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Can you fire 80% of doctors and a hospital will survive? Probably, the janitorial staff will still come in, and the light switch will still light a bulb. As a s
by 88913527 4y ago
Can you fire 80% of doctors and a hospital will survive? Probably, the janitorial staff will still come in, and the light switch will still light a bulb. As a sibling comment notes, the degree to which employees are expendable and measure of survivability is key. Business types will erroneously think they can fire 80% of the staff, keep the lights on, and keep up new feature development. The biggest risk with this sort of minimizing thinking is thinking you can achieve more with less: you often can't, especially when it comes to the large business environments this article specifically carves out (the concept does not apply to small and medium sized businesses).
Growth often comes with dead weight. You can't 10x your staff overnight and expect the same output per engineer. And as you grow, your organizational structure impacts your architecture (Conway's law). The downsizing frequently is an unwinnable scenario, and people need to recognize that going into it.
- 3a2d29 4y agoI mean you can certainly fire 80% of engineers and the software still runs. Most workers if you fire 80%, there is an immediate drop in production. I think the loss of engineers is felt on a more long-term basis.
- dopidopHN 4y agoI mean, it’s all about building fancy automation right? It’s not surprising that our faithful machines keep generating heat and maybe money. Then, how long can that last ? Probably a while. I’ve been in mostly sinking ships. People are way more replaceable that we think. In a good way. But mistake are made. Quality drop. New features halt. Turnover rise….
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> Can you fire 80% of doctors and a hospital will survive? Probably the hospital, the building, would survive even with no doctors, but the patients wouldn't. It's not the same thing for software. Software is not really alive in the first place and doesn't need anything more than electricity to keep running.