
Ask HN: What's the equivalent to a 3 Michelin starred restaurant in tech? - itamarwe
I&#x27;ve been watching &quot;Chef&#x27;s table&quot; recently and I was so impressed by the level of expertise that the chefs have. Even more impressive is the team spirit, attention to detail, desire to never stop innovating, pursuit for perfection. It feels like working in such a restaurant is an amazing and enriching experience.
I&#x27;m wondering if there is an equivalent in the tech world - if there are companies that work like this, and if so, are they more successful than other companies?
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mtmail
Michelin awards the whole experience in the dining room and doesn't check what
went into creating it (they don't step into the kitchen). From documentaries I
learned the low level kitchen staff gets a lot of pressure and many are only
enduring it (low pay, longer hours) to have that on their CV. I'm not sure I'd
call that "amazing and enriching experience", maybe it is later if they look
back.

I would see
[https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/](https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/)
as the tech equivalent award currently.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
This is interesting. I worked in a kitchen for a while after high school.
People look down at kitchen workers but it takes a strong, well organize, calm
person to do the job.

The pressure was high, the pay was low and you are constantly being told how
to do your job. If you don't agree think about how you act when you're hungry.

The workers have to deal with people that are waiting for their meal. 99% good
is a failure because there will always be someone that gets upset because
their meal was wrong in some way. It has to be perfect and needs to be done in
a timely manner. An to top it all, people get upset because it's too
expensive.

When I compare those days to my IT career. IT is easy and I'm happy I never
have to work a kitchen again.

I would say, from what I've heard, Amazon would take the 3 Michelin stars.

~~~
mtmail
I have chefs in my family and worked at kitchen staff one summer and can
relate. Everytime we meet they tell me I'm lucky to work in tech.

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WA
The game development industry. Low pay, high pressure, trying to achieve
better graphics and gameplay and whatnot all the time. Ratings and reviews as
Michelin awards.

~~~
ekianjo
Sadly unlike Michelin restaurants, you are not guaranteed to get a good game
even if it has good reviews. Too much corruption going on.

~~~
thenomad
I don't know much about the Michelin process, but I would be shocked if it was
completely impartial either.

And I do know that there's the well-known "French Michelin" phenomenon - a
star in France means much less than a star elsewhere. There are, by repute,
three-star Parisian restaurants that would be struggling to get two stars
elsewhere in the world.

~~~
ekianjo
What I mean is that a 3 stars restaurant is really never going to be "bad" by
any measure. Michelin would kill their reputation if they gave out 3 stars to
just any high-class restaurant.

On the other hand, there are games like BioShock Infinite which get widespread
critic appraisal, while the game is obviously just a repetitive shooter with
corridors and an obvious lack of any freedom. Sure, it has a storyline
(whether you like it or not is a different topic) but a game should be rated
primarily for how good it is in its interactive medium, not its novelization.
I picked on Bioshock Infinite but it's certainly not limited to that one.

------
joezydeco
A long time ago we used to obsess over the SEI/CMM (Capability Maturity
Model), where a software organization is inspected and rated on a level from 1
(chaos, cat herding) to 5 (managed, optimizing).

Managers would read papers about the CMM and declare that they wanted to be a
Level 5 organization, causing insane amounts of busywork and document
generation and overall grief to realize that their underlying business
processes were hopelessly in the way of any positive change.

So then the goal went from "Level 5 or Bust!" to "Okay, let's try to get to 3"
and then later "Um, can we make Level 2?" Then everyone just gave up. There
were only a handful of shops that ever made 5 and stayed there, the Space
Shuttle engineers being the most famous example[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model)

[2] [https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-
stuff](https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)

~~~
itamarwe
But it doesn't seem like 3 starred restaurants create "busy work" or
documents, and yet, they highly value craftsmanship, quality, creativity.

What's the equivalent of that?

~~~
joezydeco
You might want to dig in and truly understand what a "3 star" establishment is
and the _insane_ amount of hard work necessary to achieve it. The trick to
earning any kind of Michelin Star, even one, is to keep the diner _from ever
seeing that work_.

It may seem "amazing and enriching" from the outside, and sous-chefs that work
in these establishments surely have a resume that will open doors around the
world, but to think it's a fun or entertaining experience is an incorrect
assessment.

Here's some reading to get you started:

[http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/top-chefs-
michelin...](http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/top-chefs-michelin-
stars)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Likewise, while I haven't worked in a CMMI-5 environment, I have worked in an
organization where I was required to be trained in TSP/PSP which (arguably)
provides an even lower defect rate than CMMI-5. The amount of process and
paperwork required was absolutely ridiculous and eventually caused me to leave
due to all the fun simply having been removed from the job.

It may produce high-quality output, but you won't enjoy doing it!

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ethanbond
I think such discipline is exceptionally rare in software, and it's never
sexy. How about NASA? Haven't they only had like 4 software bugs in their
control software ever (or some equally absurd figure)?

In design, Apple's core hardware design team is over the top psychotic about
the quality of their work. It's a true obsession for them. Many font foundries
have similar neuroticism driving their work.

I think Chef's Table (great show!) does us all a disservice by kind of
skipping over how unbelievably grueling such an undertaking is. It truly is
inhuman. It's unfathomably difficult to create merely a successful
restaurant... it takes a perfect storm — in both the positive and negative
sense — for someone to create something like a Michelin starred restaurant.

So yes, probably. Is it sexy? Certainly not. It looks insane more than
anything outside of the lens of a beautifully crafted documentary.

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js4
It really depends on how you define success. Cheesecake Factory is more
"successful" then Jiro's Restaraunt with regard to cash generation.

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heisenbit
This is a people service business like cooking. Which makes it hard to scale
when it comes to excellent service. Boutique consulting companies may offer
excellent service. Like with kitchens there are plenty of them all claiming to
serve great food. Stellar are few. The initial looks can be deceiving.

Hint: The proof is in the pudding. But you have to sit through the whole meal
to know whether you enjoyed it...

~~~
itamarwe
Any concrete examples for such a boutique consulting company?

Can't a product company have these characteristics?

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hood_syntax
Galois is one example

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LarryMade2
I would say probably Apple is a good example in past experiences.

Their products were regarded as things that "Just work" their website was very
easy to use for support and information, and these were consistent over a long
period of time.

I'm not so sure about the Apple today, but in the 2000s they were certainly
were hitting their marks.

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perfmode
Working with Jeff Dean or Sanjay Ghemawat.

