6 ms·

Indeed. Speedrunning an LLM variation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law. Organizations which design sy

Indeed. Speedrunning an LLM variation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law. Organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. — Melvin E. Conway, How Do Committees Invent? > there's a fundamental shift when a system can no longer be held in a single mind Should LLM users invest in both biological (e.g. memory palace) and silicon memory caches?

JohnMakin 1y ago
This law took several years to understand for me. Early on, I'd come into an infra situation and kind of incredulously say stuff like "Why not do (incredibly obvious thing)?" and be frustrated by it quite often. Usually it's not because people think it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, it's because of this law. Like yes in an ideal world we'd do xyz, but department head of product A is a complete anti-productive bozo that no one wants to talk to or deal with, so we'll engineer around him kind of a thing. It's incredibly common once you see it play out you'll see it everywhere.
- transpute 1y ago
  > no one wants to talk to or deal with, so we'll engineer around him Sometimes, forking product lines, departments or budgets.
sunrunner 1y ago
I'm compelled to make sure any comment mentioning Conway's Law has a reply linking the following video (and perhaps I should create a bot to do this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY This analysis of the real-world effects of Conway's Law seems deeply horrifying, because the implication seems to be that there's nothing you can do to keep communication efficiency and design quality high while also growing an organisation.
- transpute 1y ago
  > horrifying Self-regulating.
  - sunrunner 1y ago
    Self-regulating in a way that is designed to favour smaller independent groups with a more complete understanding and ownership of whatever <thing> that team does?
- exceptione 1y ago
  I think you better link to a good article instead. Good grief, what a horror. A talking head rambling on for 60 minutes. --- disclaimer: if low information density is your thing, then your mileage may vary. Video's are for documentaries, not for reading out an article in the camera.
  - sunrunner 1y ago
    Okay, so you didn't even bother to take a few seconds to step through the video to see if there was anything other than the talking head (I'll help you out a bit, there is). Either way, it's a step-by-step walk through of the ideas of the original article that introduced Conway's Law and a deeper inspection into ideas about _why_ it might be that way. If that's not enough then my apologies but I haven't yet found an equivalent article that goes through the ideas in the same way but in the kind of information-dense format that I assume would help you hit your daily macros. Edit: Accidentally a word
    - brulard 1y ago
      Man, I don't know what kind of world you live in, but an hour long video is a little too much to swallow when reading HN comments. I even gave it a chance, but had to close the tab after the guy just prepared you for something and then steered away to explain "what is a law". That's absurd.
    - exceptione 1y ago

JohnMakin 1y ago

This law took several years to understand for me. Early on, I'd come into an infra situation and kind of incredulously say stuff like "Why not do (incredibly obvious thing)?" and be frustrated by it quite often. Usually it's not because people think it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, it's because of this law. Like yes in an ideal world we'd do xyz, but department head of product A is a complete anti-productive bozo that no one wants to talk to or deal with, so we'll engineer around him kind of a thing. It's incredibly common once you see it play out you'll see it everywhere.

transpute 1y ago
> no one wants to talk to or deal with, so we'll engineer around him Sometimes, forking product lines, departments or budgets.

sunrunner 1y ago

I'm compelled to make sure any comment mentioning Conway's Law has a reply linking the following video (and perhaps I should create a bot to do this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY This analysis of the real-world effects of Conway's Law seems deeply horrifying, because the implication seems to be that there's nothing you can do to keep communication efficiency and design quality high while also growing an organisation.

transpute 1y ago
> horrifying Self-regulating.
- sunrunner 1y ago
  Self-regulating in a way that is designed to favour smaller independent groups with a more complete understanding and ownership of whatever <thing> that team does?
exceptione 1y ago
I think you better link to a good article instead. Good grief, what a horror. A talking head rambling on for 60 minutes. --- disclaimer: if low information density is your thing, then your mileage may vary. Video's are for documentaries, not for reading out an article in the camera.
- sunrunner 1y ago
  Okay, so you didn't even bother to take a few seconds to step through the video to see if there was anything other than the talking head (I'll help you out a bit, there is). Either way, it's a step-by-step walk through of the ideas of the original article that introduced Conway's Law and a deeper inspection into ideas about _why_ it might be that way. If that's not enough then my apologies but I haven't yet found an equivalent article that goes through the ideas in the same way but in the kind of information-dense format that I assume would help you hit your daily macros. Edit: Accidentally a word
  - brulard 1y ago
    Man, I don't know what kind of world you live in, but an hour long video is a little too much to swallow when reading HN comments. I even gave it a chance, but had to close the tab after the guy just prepared you for something and then steered away to explain "what is a law". That's absurd.
  - exceptione 1y ago