The Case For Waste (in Tech)
Today we’re going to talk about one of the greatest traps that software engineering teams need to overcome: Efficiency.
Imagine you owned a furniture factory in the 19th century. You bought a whole bunch of machines, hired a bunch of guys to haul stuff and to actually operate the machines that mass produce your furniture. Lumber goes in. Furniture goes out. You profit.
Then one day some clever bastard comes along and says you’re throwing money away! Fifteen percent of the lumber you buy ends up as sawdust on the factory floor; so much wasted… He could make some simple process improvements and add some improved quality controls to get that down to ten percent. You would get five percent more furniture to sell (five percent more revenue!) without having to expand your factory or buy more raw materials.
And that’s how you hired your first Manager.
The Trap
Part of the efficiency trap comes from this shared history. Every book and class on how to be a good manager focused on efficiency because that’s how managers justified their salaries. Taylor to Deming to Drucker to Grove… just a relentless focus on efficiently running a factory.
But efficiency by definition is the ratio of useful output to useful input. A power line is 98% efficient when only 2% of the wattage…
