On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:01:09PM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > Good lord, an innovative technique, including coming up with a > radically new design, building and testing hardware, all within a > year?
If they spent 6 hours per day working and it took two years, then yes, it is likely it could be done in one year if they spent 12 hours. > But, the creative stuff requires me to do things like clean the > kitchen, play golf, etc. in order to solve the problem. When I stop > looking at the problem, the solution appears. And the solution probably would have appeared faster if you weren't doing those other things. There are lots of things you can do to change your viewpoint on a problem, talk to others about it, read books, make a list of all possible solutions that have worked in the past for related problems, check your journal of ideas that you keep, or any of another million ways that you can look up in various problem solving books. It isn't the golf that helps you solve the problem, it is the process of looking at the problem from a different angle. And there are more efficient ways to do that than golf. > Question, then. Management A ran the company, respecting how these > and other guys worked. The company was first in market share, by a > good margin. It was sold for a very good profit by the parent company > (it was groomed for sale, they didn't have the global infrastructure > to really expand the company). The corporation that bought them had a > philosophy like yours. I don't think you understand my philosophy. > After 3 years, engineering productivity fell to pieces. There were > long hours, one factor > tight schedules, another factor > no time to think. and another factor, two of them indicate that management expected things to be done more quickly than you think they could be done, and one factor indicates people were working long to make that schedule. That isn't a good example for what I was talking about, without more details about the schedule. From what you have said, it is quite possible that the longer hours resulted in faster progress than shorter hours would have, but the schedule was so unrealistic that it STILL did not meet the deadline. > Junk was turned out. Quality has often been sacrificed to meet an unrealistic deadline. I don't claim that ANY task can be done in X days if you work long enough (when X is sufficiently small). What I claim is that in most cases, a task can be done in Y days by working longer hours, where it would have otherwise taken Z days, and Y < Z. > These guys were really great in that they got away lying about > what they did to the management. They actually turned out good > product their own way, by playing politics right. (They got lucky in > having some folks who wanted the company to survive intervene with > management.) They were the only group to turn out product that was at > the forefront of the market (my inventions were before the buyout.) I've known really smart guys who can get good results while working less than most people. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't get more results or faster results if they worked longer. > There were plenty of plodders, doing things your way, turning out > stuff that didn't work. No, they weren't doing it my way! -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
