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Software Friction

(www.hillelwayne.com)
141 points saikatsg | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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beryilma ◴[] No.40720419[source]
The article seems insightful on the surface but falls apart very quickly when you take time to analyze what the author is actually saying in each sentence. Pretty much every statement is a logically false or bad argument or, at least, requires a lot of supporting material to be convincing.

Take the following sentences for example.

> If people have enough autonomy to make locally smart decisions, then they can recover from friction more easily.

Having autonomy has no relationship to recovering from friction more easily. Any why would autonomy cause one to make locally smart decision? The person having the autonomy might be the one causing the friction in the first place and might also be the one making bad decisions.

> Friction compounds with itself: two setbacks are more than twice as bad as one setback. This is because most systems are at least somewhat resilient and can adjust itself around some problem, but that makes the next issue harder to deal with.

Why would being resilient to one type of problem cause not being resilient to another type of problem? And why would this cause the friction to compound itself?

Incidentally, ChatGPT does produce an equally (if not more) plausible article when I ask it to produce an article on software friction.

replies(2): >>40721540 #>>40723558 #
1. ranger207 ◴[] No.40723558[source]
Going up the chain for order is itself a source of friction. Communicating the situation on the ground, dealing with transmission issues like staticky radios, waiting for command to have time to deal with your issue (they may be dealing with other units having similar issues, especially if you have a command structure that doesn't delegate), etc. It's uncommon that higher levels of leadership have a better understanding of what lower level units are dealing with than the lower level unit itself