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> the teams designing the 3D engine need to communicate with the teams building the game engine and the game designers themselves and the artists to achieve a c

> the teams designing the 3D engine need to communicate with the teams building the game engine and the game designers themselves and the artists to achieve a cohesive whole. Sure, just as they need to communicate to the farmer what food needs to be grown in order to ensure that the right food shows up on their dinner table. These are solved problems, though. We already know how to do incredibly complex things at scale.

tsimionescu 2y ago
No, it is nowhere near like that. Food is a particularly bad example, as the food industry is extremely wasteful overall, with a huge percentage of all food produced being thrown away at all levels of the production chain all the way to the final consumer. In addition, most companies that package food in various ways, including major restaurants, either own or contract farming business for specific quantities of specific crops ahead of time, spending large amounts of time to negotiate contracts to this effect, and sometimes working even closer when a particular result is required. If you find yourself craving Mongolian food one night, you may often simply find that none is available, at any price you are willing to pay, unless you worked with someone to make some months in advance. And conversely if you open a Mongolian restaurant, you may just not find any customers for it and waste significant money on it. (substitute Mongolian with any other food that is not commonly eaten or even thought about in your area)
- randomdata 2y ago
  It's told to be not like that and a bad example, but then we learn how it is exactly like that and how it is great example... Intriguing.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    The point is that you do need explicit integration and cooperation. And you often have way more than 4-8 people working on one of these contracts to even define the terms. And again, most real companies own most of their supply chain, they don't depend on a hundred different suppliers at every level like you seem to be suggesting. And they do this because it's FAR more efficient to have a large monolithic team build something together than to rely on dozens of small teams competing in a market to build the same thing.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > The point is that you do need explicit integration and cooperation. Obviously. Like we said, no 4-8 person team is building anything by themselves. For one, most obviously, they'd starve to death if they even tried. Integration and cooperation are literally what defines an economy. > most real companies own most of their supply chain As opposed to fake companies, that have no supply chain, with them being fake and all? > because it's FAR more efficient to have a large monolithic team build something together How can you know? The problems needed to be solved to see that through were stated to be unsolved. Was there some breakthrough in the past 10 hours that you haven't mentioned and the rest of us missed?
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        > As opposed to fake companies, that have no supply chain, with them being fake and all? I should have said "companies that can afford to". > How can you know? The problems needed to be solved to see that through were stated to be unsolved. Was there some breakthrough in the past 10 hours that you haven't mentioned and the rest of us missed? Because I can look at the price of goods versus their cost. A company that owns the production chain for a sub-component is paying the cost of that component, while a company that doesn't pays the market price. Also, markets only work if you have competing suppliers for the same product. This in itself is extremely wasteful for software, so trying to maintain an internal market of software where multiple teams build the same service and compete with each other on who has a better version is crazy when there is any alternative. Again we can see this from the software market: most companies not only don't build an internal market in house to have, say, the best OS, but they actually found that even supporting an external market is wasteful. Instead of buying Solaris or Windows or OS/2, they started collaborating on Linux (and clang, and MySQL, and Kubernetes and others). But these are not built as a marketplace of microservices. They are built as monoliths with large teams working to add features and collaborating relying on a hierarchy of maintainers to merge them together in a cohesive whole, or on a more elaborate committee system. So again, I don't see any proof whatsoever that building a company or a product in general out of a marketplace of dozens or hundreds of very small teams has ever worked beyond maybe some niche cases.

tsimionescu 2y ago

No, it is nowhere near like that. Food is a particularly bad example, as the food industry is extremely wasteful overall, with a huge percentage of all food produced being thrown away at all levels of the production chain all the way to the final consumer. In addition, most companies that package food in various ways, including major restaurants, either own or contract farming business for specific quantities of specific crops ahead of time, spending large amounts of time to negotiate contracts to this effect, and sometimes working even closer when a particular result is required. If you find yourself craving Mongolian food one night, you may often simply find that none is available, at any price you are willing to pay, unless you worked with someone to make some months in advance. And conversely if you open a Mongolian restaurant, you may just not find any customers for it and waste significant money on it. (substitute Mongolian with any other food that is not commonly eaten or even thought about in your area)

randomdata 2y ago
It's told to be not like that and a bad example, but then we learn how it is exactly like that and how it is great example... Intriguing.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  The point is that you do need explicit integration and cooperation. And you often have way more than 4-8 people working on one of these contracts to even define the terms. And again, most real companies own most of their supply chain, they don't depend on a hundred different suppliers at every level like you seem to be suggesting. And they do this because it's FAR more efficient to have a large monolithic team build something together than to rely on dozens of small teams competing in a market to build the same thing.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > The point is that you do need explicit integration and cooperation. Obviously. Like we said, no 4-8 person team is building anything by themselves. For one, most obviously, they'd starve to death if they even tried. Integration and cooperation are literally what defines an economy. > most real companies own most of their supply chain As opposed to fake companies, that have no supply chain, with them being fake and all? > because it's FAR more efficient to have a large monolithic team build something together How can you know? The problems needed to be solved to see that through were stated to be unsolved. Was there some breakthrough in the past 10 hours that you haven't mentioned and the rest of us missed?
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      > As opposed to fake companies, that have no supply chain, with them being fake and all? I should have said "companies that can afford to". > How can you know? The problems needed to be solved to see that through were stated to be unsolved. Was there some breakthrough in the past 10 hours that you haven't mentioned and the rest of us missed? Because I can look at the price of goods versus their cost. A company that owns the production chain for a sub-component is paying the cost of that component, while a company that doesn't pays the market price. Also, markets only work if you have competing suppliers for the same product. This in itself is extremely wasteful for software, so trying to maintain an internal market of software where multiple teams build the same service and compete with each other on who has a better version is crazy when there is any alternative. Again we can see this from the software market: most companies not only don't build an internal market in house to have, say, the best OS, but they actually found that even supporting an external market is wasteful. Instead of buying Solaris or Windows or OS/2, they started collaborating on Linux (and clang, and MySQL, and Kubernetes and others). But these are not built as a marketplace of microservices. They are built as monoliths with large teams working to add features and collaborating relying on a hierarchy of maintainers to merge them together in a cohesive whole, or on a more elaborate committee system. So again, I don't see any proof whatsoever that building a company or a product in general out of a marketplace of dozens or hundreds of very small teams has ever worked beyond maybe some niche cases.