“A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”
We are a software development company and my reply to this was basically that pot making hasn’t changed in a long time, it’s basically shaping and firing clay. Software development is comparatively new and has a vastly more dynamic landscape.
Also, the comparison is stupid because we don’t write code, realize it was shit and write a new one. If we did business like that, we wouldn’t be in business.
From my experience of boss looking at people working. Working hard is by a huge margin a lot better than working smart. Trust me I know my shit. Once I even wrote a formula in Excel! /s
That being said with experience you stop using anecdotes, easy pre-made sentences like “premature abstraction/optimisation is the root of all evil!” and you understand that there are no generic solutions and you need, every time, to think hard about the best way to produce something relatively to the context and constraints which, most of them, aren’t technical but organizational and human related.
And also, if you intend to work on a project more than 6 months. Quality is really worth it. The lack of quality works like accumulating mud. After a while, you are stuck, and the next step will require a huge amount of energy.
Give the same assignment to professionals and you will get a bunch of cheap pots from the quantity group, and a single perfect pot from the quality group that is so much better than all the others together.
Ah yes a quote about beginners rapidly gaining beginner gains by practicing really does apply to a group of professionals trying to do their job in a business /s
It’s shocking the amount of morons people trying to do their job have to deal with nowadays. I’m sorry you have a colleague with the critical thinking ability of a punch drunk.
That’s a really terrible anecdote. Real life quantity group would find ways to do less and less for the same reward. You would end up with fifty pounds of clay with a fist shape indention. Call it a pot and be done.
It seems like such a little story that it would probably have an origin. It doesn’t seem like the ceramics class, the people who created the story mentioned, ever existed. When asked, they said it was actually a photography class (from the professor Jerry Uelsman). I’d also argue that while that may hold true for learning skills (if it does) it doesn’t necessarily hold true for performing skills. Also I’d say the main reason it could work, is that it got them to actually do something.
At work we have the following quote on the fridge
We are a software development company and my reply to this was basically that pot making hasn’t changed in a long time, it’s basically shaping and firing clay. Software development is comparatively new and has a vastly more dynamic landscape.
Also, the comparison is stupid because we don’t write code, realize it was shit and write a new one. If we did business like that, we wouldn’t be in business.
From my experience of boss looking at people working. Working hard is by a huge margin a lot better than working smart. Trust me I know my shit. Once I even wrote a formula in Excel! /s
That being said with experience you stop using anecdotes, easy pre-made sentences like “premature abstraction/optimisation is the root of all evil!” and you understand that there are no generic solutions and you need, every time, to think hard about the best way to produce something relatively to the context and constraints which, most of them, aren’t technical but organizational and human related.
And also, if you intend to work on a project more than 6 months. Quality is really worth it. The lack of quality works like accumulating mud. After a while, you are stuck, and the next step will require a huge amount of energy.
Give the same assignment to professionals and you will get a bunch of cheap pots from the quantity group, and a single perfect pot from the quality group that is so much better than all the others together.
Ah yes a quote about beginners rapidly gaining beginner gains by practicing really does apply to a group of professionals trying to do their job in a business /s
It’s shocking the amount of morons people trying to do their job have to deal with nowadays. I’m sorry you have a colleague with the critical thinking ability of a punch drunk.
Yeah, not for long, I’m quitting this company as soon as I can.
Why can’t you be a team player? /s
Also, if you break the spirits of upper management, does that count?
That’s a really terrible anecdote. Real life quantity group would find ways to do less and less for the same reward. You would end up with fifty pounds of clay with a fist shape indention. Call it a pot and be done.
Yeah, I highly doubt it happened.
…and then add a sticky note below it:
“And then Einstein and Obama and Jobs were there and everybody clapped they were so shocked!”
I mean, you shouldn’t, but it sounds like the quote-poster is asking for exactly that kind of boondoggle of a project.
That quote sounds like an excuse for mass production worship a la brave new world, lol.
It seems like such a little story that it would probably have an origin. It doesn’t seem like the ceramics class, the people who created the story mentioned, ever existed. When asked, they said it was actually a photography class (from the professor Jerry Uelsman). I’d also argue that while that may hold true for learning skills (if it does) it doesn’t necessarily hold true for performing skills. Also I’d say the main reason it could work, is that it got them to actually do something.