
The Diminishing Returns of Everything - sstevenshang
https://stevenshang.com/things-i-learned-today-april-25-2020
======
cmenge
I can see why it _feels_ this way, but often times it seems to me the opposite
is true, like a phase transition: it remains a bunch of commits until at some
point it 'suddenly' becomes a product, usable by the designated users, solving
a problem, possibly generating revenue. Like water that cools and cools and
eventually turns to ice, even though that last quarter degree didn't change
the temperature a lot.

~~~
JamesBarney
I think you're getting at something very important about the article.

> The first couple hundred lines of code of your project will have a much
> larger impact than the last few thousand lines of code ever will.

This is true of impact on functionality, not necessarily impact on the world.

If I write my own todo app it might be useful to one person, but as I continue
to work on it, eventually 2 people will find it useful. Then 3. I could be up
to 3x less productive per hour and still have the same impact per hour due the
increased number of users.

Impact on the world is (functionality) * (# of users). If you're working on a
useful project the number of users will more than make up for the diminishing
functionality returns per hour.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
To rephrase this then: your additional work may improve your product only a
little, but it may be enough that it can now compete in the market. If it's a
winner-takes-all market, a slight improvement in quality may be especially
consequential.

 _edit_ I think this might model the success of Slack. _Which chat program
should we use? There are lots of free ones and they 're all about the same,
but Slack has slightly better polish than the rest and is easy to set up.
Let's use that._ If that conversation happens in tens of thousands of
organisations, you take over the world.

------
munificent
_> The only exception to this rule I can think of is McDonald's fries. The
more you eat, the better they become. It is true._

Potato chips are, to me, an even more perfect example of this effect. They are
engineering marvels. If a food is too salty, you eventually crave something
sweet. Too sweet and you get tired and want salt. Potato chips take the
sweetness of potato starch and add _just_ the right amount of salt to keep you
balanced.

The satisfying crunchiness gives way to carby creaminess, which then promptly
dissolves entirely, leaving you feeling like you haven't consumed anything at
all [1], so surely one more chip is OK, right?

Potato chips are my crack. If I could eat them unburdened by shame or the
desire to take care of my health, I would eat them until I burst.

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-
extraordinar...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-
extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html)

~~~
nonbirithm
It feels like some foods have fervent followings despite contributing to
things like heart disease. It's a good example of how humans get thrown off
when dealing with decades long timespans of bad choices that add up, except
with food we all have to eat.

I recall that when processed meats including bacon were classified as
carcinogens, people basically said "screw that, it's _bacon_ for crying out
loud." I'm not sure to what extent they were joking. I personally avoid all
processed meats, but to me the public sentiment over some unhealthy foods is
in stark contrast to public sentiment over smoking or alcoholism.

One time I searched something to the effect of "why are potato chips
unhealthy" and got back a general sentiment of "well, they're not _that_ bad
for you, as long as it's only once in a while." I feel like with this attitude
it adds up over time though. It's probably not possible to pin down exactly
what foods caused a heart attack, as opposed to being able to more clearly
associate lung cancer with a smoking addiction.

With smoking it provides no real benefit except lessening the craving for
another smoke. With unhealthy foods everyone has to eat, so maybe you'd be
more forgiven for eating them than throwing away your health on something not
essential to survival. Fancy ice cream parlors are the norm, and nobody is
going to lobby politicians to close them down in the name of public health.
It's just ice cream, served by people working out of food trucks trying to
make a living. The most they do is insitute soda taxes. God forbid soda itself
is banned.

Is there an illustration on how foods like potato chips affect health long-
term? Something like the study that estimates every cigarette takes eleven
minutes off your lifespan. There are a lot of different foods to cover though.
I feel like if there was data stating every potato chip took X seconds off my
lifespan it would be easier to deny myself from buying them by looking through
the items at the supermarket and being able to think "17 minutes, 22 minutes."

When I think of someone beginning to smoke I imagine them being told "you're
going down a path that will almost certainly kill you down the line." When I
imagine someone being a regular at an artisan donut shop I imagine people
asking them how the taste was.

~~~
munificent
_> I recall that when processed meats including bacon were classified as
carcinogens, people basically said "screw that, it's bacon for crying out
loud." I'm not sure to what extent they were joking._

I love bacon. I know it's unhealthy. I still eat it.

You seem to be coming from a perspective where the only goal is to maximize
life. But that's not how people operate. People are trying to maximize
_living_.

I could probably live to 110 if I ate nothing but tofu and mineral water and
lived in a sanitized bubble. But would I even _want_ to?

I don't want to make choices so unhealthy that they significantly impact the
quality and length of my life. But I sure as hell want to pack as many
experiences as I can before I reach that point. Some of those experiences are
going to take their toll on my body. That's the price you pay for living and
for many experiences, the price is worth it.

Personally, I don't think it is for cigarettes. (And, in particular, it is
certainly not fair to make people in the _vicinity_ of smokers pay that
price.) But many people love the sensation of smoking. I do think it's worth
the price to have some bacon with breakfast and a whiskey nightcap before bed.

 _> I feel like if there was data stating every potato chip took X seconds off
my lifespan it would be easier to deny myself from buying them by looking
through the items at the supermarket and being able to think "17 minutes, 22
minutes."_

You are describing a dystopian nightmare. Can you imagine this applied to
every choice you make? You see a cute person on the other end of the bar and a
little chat bubble appears in your personal heads-up-display "They will break
up with you two years after you begin dating." You look at a cute puppy at a
shelter. "She will die young of congenital heart disease."

~~~
perl4ever
"I could probably live to 110"

The problem is, if you get an extra 20 years, they aren't added on between say
40 and 50. The years from 90 to 110 aren't going to be much fun.

------
turbinerneiter
> For instance, I spend the past two days working on a single CSS file, in an
> attempt to center-align some stupid buttons (a futile attempt, since they
> are still not aligned). In comparison, at the beginning of the project, I
> built out the entire REST backend of the web app in a single afternoon.

It could be argued that the value of the REST backend is lower than the value
of the stupid buttons: since the backend is so simple, everybody can do it,
while the stupid button takes a wizard to get right. On the market, your
commoditized REST backend will have to compete with other solutions on the
quality of your stupid buttons.

Hence, spend even less time on the backend, by using auto-generators, and
focus all your time on the button. Buttons are a big dollar business.

Damn, I wish a had a CRUD-auto-generator-business, this would be the perfect
plug. Check out auto-crud-button-focus.com right now!

/edit: adding the [irony] tag before I get more insulted "WHAT???!?!?!?"s (I
know nothing about backend stuff, I work in embedded and electronics)

~~~
brabel
> since the backend is so simple, everybody can do it, while the stupid button
> takes a wizard to get right

What?!?!?!

~~~
dredmorbius
That was, as the saying goeth, the joke.

------
mr_gibbins
This is disingenuous. Sure, the first X hours of working on a new project are
a lot of fun and you can set up the framework for what you're doing and feel
like you're making great progress.

But what you're missing is detail and quality. For example, I can set up the
structure of my thesis by working out chapter titles, headings, subheadings
and drafting bullet points per section. Straightforward. But doing the
research and writing up takes years, it's often boring, laborious and the net
addition to the document can be as low as a couple of hundred words a week. It
doesn't mean the actual work is less valuable as time progresses.

Likewise let's consider a software development project. We can make grand
strides in the first X weeks, gathering requirements, creating user stories,
creating tasks, sprints, assigning work, setting deliverables, setting up the
various ceremonies. But at some point it boils down to writing some code,
often boring, time-consuming, detailed and slow. It doesn't mean the
contributions made later in the project are any less valuable than the frantic
hive of activity in the beginning.

~~~
simplify
You're misusing the word "disingenuous". The author has no ill intention of
being insincere.

~~~
downerending
Simplifying, "The author has no intention of being insincere."

Or perhaps even, "The author is not insincere."

Or alternatively, "The author is sincere."

------
Duckapple
I don't really like the emphasis on "wasting" time, the way he wrote it in the
bathroom light automation section. If you do not enjoy tinkering with voice
activation (or X thing in the general sense), then I can see why you wouldn't
like losing time, but I would probably feel like it was 5 hours spent learning
about home automation and voice control, which could maybe be applicable in
other cases, both within home automation and outside of it. I don't see the 3
hours mentioned as "lost", but as time spent learning.

~~~
rkangel
Not all time can be considered equal. Let us say that one of my team spent two
weeks building tooling that might save us a single day on two occasions. That
might still be worth it if that day saved is part of some time pressured work.

You can think of this as the classic engineering 'latency vs throughput'
tradeoff. We're spending a bit of throughput to get an improvement in latency.

------
alacombe
That's why you pay contractors / specialized people.

A 2-day electrical job would probably have taken me a month to complete
working evenings / week-ends, assuming no other house maintenance on the side,
and the job would certainly have been sub-optimal and I'd have selected
overkill components. Same goes about a plumbing job, it's not rocket science,
but working in tight spaces can be tricky/messy, professionals know how to do
it.

As for the backend, it's easy to spin up if you know the tech, have done it a
couple of times and know what to do. Given enough time, I could probably
design an IoT gadget from the ground up. FPGA conception, ASIC design, then
PCB integration, spin up, mechanical design, network interfacing, back & front
end services. But not only the end product will certainly be over-engineered,
but it will have taken me 2 years to build and I would have no idea how to
sell it.

I had a family member who cashed out in the SV and then tanked his next start-
up. Long story short, he's a business guy, not a tech guy. He lost 3 years on
fairly simple MVP, then finally decided to pay someone, but it was too late.

I guess the morale of the story is to know ones own limits...

------
eric_b
> The first couple hundred lines of code of your project will have a much
> larger impact than the last few thousand lines of code ever will.

I think it's easy to underestimate the importance of polish and fit and
finish. In my experience a product's success or failure is made in the last
20% of development, when all the fine tuning and bug fixing goes in to
overdrive, and user experience is honed.

------
IAmNotAFix
> The first couple hundred lines of code of your project will have a much
> larger impact than the last few thousand lines of code ever will.

With this explanation, the author explains the diminishing returns by the fact
that their value decreases ("impact"). I disagree: returns diminish because
their cost increases. Assuming a thing can generate 100% of some value, the
range 0-20% generates as much value as the range 80%-100%, but the latter
range is more costly than the first range.

The return of centering the buttons is significant, because if they're not
centered then the product will look unprofessionnal, which is not good for
business. It just happens than the cost of centering them is high, in this
case as high as setting up the REST service in a first place.

The return of having your company survive is extremetely high. It just happens
that this cannot be done with the first few dozens employees but with hundreds
more, which is of course way more expensive.

------
ken
> The same goes for abs. The first ten thousand set-ups you do just may give
> you that 6-pack abs you want, but another thirty thousand sure won't get you
> the 7-pack.

He picked the one type of exercise which doesn't really change. If you're
lifting or running, you see _increasing_ returns for a long time. You get
stronger by lifting heavy weights, and you need to lift light weights to be
able to lift heavy weights.

~~~
GloriousKoji
It's also a bad example because pack number is determined largely by genetics
and visibility is largely determined by diet. Look at Arnold in his Mr Olympia
days, he only had a 5-pack.

------
irjustin
But let me put it in perspective, if I wasn't wasting my time moving that
button, I'd probably be watching youtube.

Is that wasted? Was it truly 3 hours lost for the OP trying to automate the
light switch?

Nihilism. Do what you believe is worth it. Otherwise, don't because it's
simply not worth it.

------
RegBarclay
I think there is additional value to automating or improving a process even if
the time spent automating exceeds the time saved by the automation.

What if it just makes me happy that I can turn the bathroom light on with my
voice even though the time spent figuring it out exceeds any time saved by the
automation?

What if I make a sucky task at work more approachable and easier by improving
it? Rather than procrastinating doing the thing because I hate it, I pick it
up and do it right away because I invested some time in making it suck less.

What if I gain skills automating one thing that make me more efficient on the
next thing even if I'll never recover the time spent on the first thing?

------
agumonkey
Re: the voice activated light class of idea. I have a weird NIH/hoarding bug.
I always try to do thing on my own (am now making electrical circuits).
Somehow it's a huge waste of time. Yet I know a ton of stuff and can fix some
things, or avoid fear and scams.

One alternative is a hub of DIYers. Remember the story of how Xerox PARC
operated ? unattended, unmanaged.. you had an idea or a problem you ping
people around that know that domain, chat around and make a thing. In groups
it might turn diminishing returns into a massive life enhancement (in theory,
I never worked in such an environment).

ps: I actually think that picking this kind of projects is a tiny art. Don't
scratch all itches but know that knowing is always a good thing.

------
andersource
That's the Pareto principle [0]: 80% of the effects come from roughly 20% of
the causes (or effort, in this case).

Very hand-wavy but I think that's also the reason things like expertise
exhibit a power law distribution - if as you progress each "unit" of
improvement requires 4x the effort of the previous "unit", it makes sense that
only about 1/4th of people will make it through. Of course that's very
oversimplified but I think you get the gist.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)

------
michalu
As it is with many things this is both right and wrong depending on how you
look at it.

Consider something like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The first 1000 hours will surely
advance your game percentage-wise way more than the 1000 hours you accomplish
after you've put 10k hours in.

However, there aren't many people with 10k of bjj practice and you're no
longer in the rookie world. That 1k may make you just 1% better but that 1%
means a lot among the elite.

------
depressedpanda
Centering a button with css should not take two days. If you haven't solved
the problem already, feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to help.

------
js8
There are diminishing returns in everything because we focus on high impact
things first. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

------
swader999
I don't feel like this applies to UX. The third or fourth pass in this area
can often make a huge difference.

~~~
ken
More generally: editing. (e.g., How Star Wars was saved in the edit)

------
jriot
It might not net you a 7-pack, but it could possibly net you an 8-pack.

------
transfire
Oh, how many hours of my life have I wasted trying to center align. Sad and
all too true.

