

The value of time, or not - jack7890
http://swombat.com/2012/7/18/value-of-time

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bitdiffusion
I'm curious as to whether this general trend is a new one or if I'm just
getting old:

1) user creates semi-controversial post (see: PHP sucks, nosql sucks, node
sucks, semi-colons suck, time-is-money, ideas are worth nothing etc)

2) debated ad-nauseum with good points on both sides

3) within 24 hours, blog posts turn up which say almost the opposite of
whatever was said in a) PHP works for me, time is worth nothing, nodejs/mysql
is webscale, ideas are everything.

I can't help but feel that - much like this comment - it doesn't add much that
hasn't already been said better elsewhere and is purely for linkbait purposes.

~~~
DigitalJack
It does seem like that is happening more lately. I'm sure the original post
inspired the present author as soon as they read it, but it does take a little
while to put together a blog post, vs a reply on HN.

What I personally don't like so much is the blog posts that seem to be
targeting HN. I'm not sure why it bothers me...I guess it just seems
cloistered and almost incestuous.

I'm also not a fan of blog posts critiquing other blog posts. The blow-by-blow
he-said/she-said format doesn't appeal to me at all. It seems to me the author
in this case could have formulated his opinion into a post that didn't rely
someone else's post at all.

~~~
swombat
Actually, it took about half an hour from the point where I finished reading
Jack's post to when I posted this up.

Swombat.com started partly as a place to aggregate my commentary on articles
that I think worthy of extra attention and comments.

Worth noting that I didn't submit this to HN. Others did, and they upvoted it,
so clearly some people are disagreeing with your view. If you don't like it,
just read something else and don't upvote.

As for formulating it without mentioning Jack's article, sure, I could have
done that, but that would have been dishonest and lame, since the article was
indeed inspired by Jack's writings.

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jmduke
The laptop example used by Jack and echoed here is fair, but the most
realistic one I can think of, as a bona fide non-rockstar and non-founder, is
in-flight WiFi.

Prices have gone down quite a bit over the past year, but I remember being
locked in an inner struggle with myself to spend $50 for two hours of WiFi.

The first line of thinking is: well, can I generate $50 in those two hours if
I have WiFi? Chances are, yeah, you can -- but will you? I don't know if
you've ever tried to get work done on an airplane, but I'm miserable at it;
its cramped, loud, and just generally unpleasant. I might end up staring at a
blank terminal for two hours.

But lets say we decide that we're going to be uber-productive and we'd spend
those two hours coding away diligently. We value our productivity here at
$50/hour, so buy spending $50 on wifi we gain $100 of productivity. The next
question is: how productive would we be without wifi? Economic decisions
aren't made in a vaccuum: a programmer can do an awful lot without WiFi -- and
its up to your heuristics to decide if the bump in productivity is worth the
$50.

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genbattle
This is an interesting counterpoint to the original time post; it's better to
think about the amount of energy and focus you're putting into something,
because in the end these resources are much more finite and variable than
time.

Time is a known quantity, and at any one time you know how much time you or
your employees have available (more or less). You can burn through energy and
focus at very different rates depending on how you spend it. It's also not as
measurable as time, which is why people like to just equate time to
effort/focus, and then just measure effort based on time spent.

In reality, some people are better at spending their effort in short sharp
bursts over a longer period of time, while other people prefer to spend it all
once until a task is done or they run out of energy, and there's all sorts of
people in between. This also highlights the importance of taking time to
recharge, and making sure you have a reasonably balanced life.

I think this is the big reason for the success of some implementations of
hammock driven development and paid company holidays in increasing the value
generated by employees. In the end it's important not only to consider time
spent, but also to consider productivity. A focus purely on time spent is what
gives us 40-hour work weeks chained to a desk. Because logically the more time
you spend at your desk, the more work you'll get done, right? We all know the
fallacy of this type of thinking.

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ryandvm
As Greg Brown sang, "time ain't money when all you got is time."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-xWWFNJFJQ>

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stephengillie
The opportunity cost of wages not earned is not the proper tool with which to
measure the amount of benefit your time provides to yourself and other humans.

