
The Myth of Commoditized Excellence - jlward4th
http://barryhawkins.com/blog/posts/the-myth-of-commoditized-excellence/
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trabant00
For years now I have been consciously limiting my enthusiasm when presenting
things I've learned to others after being bitten by this problem. Some
personal examples:

* linux - the freedom it gave me to build my own computing astounded me. I praised it in every direction only to find people that want all the benefits with no effort. I had to configure their systems to prove linux was any good. When I started telling them the benefits require personal tinkering I was attacked for "being an elitist" and linux was said to be actually full of things that don't work. Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public.

* motorcycles - I now have the following presentation when people ask me about my experience riding: "It's not like on TV, when it's hot you sweat, when it's cold you freeze, when it rains you're wet and it's quite dangerous on top of it." That's after my enthusiasm convinced some people to buy motorcycles and crash because they didn't take riding seriously enough. They thought they where cool toys.

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scandox
That's what I do now when people ask me if they should have kids. I always say
the same thing: All the benefits are intangible and all the drawbacks are
tangible.

~~~
gumby
True in developed countries but still not necessarily true in certain
societies where you need hands for untrained labor or where children are
essentially saleable goods.

~~~
gumby
Normally it’s bad form to comment on receiving downvotes but in his case I’ll
point out that I spent a lot of time in such a country as a kid as I have a
parent from that country (although said parent had only two siblings and their
family didn’t practice bride price / have kids work to support family etc).

Not all reasons for having a large family are religious; some are just desire,
of course, and some are indeed economically rational. That last is part of the
reason, I believe, that birth rate drops as wealth increases, and is yet
another reason to try to increase wealth for everyone.

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benogorek
Good description of this particular lifecycle. I'm new to Hacker News and I
remember reading (when I joined) about how the platform is taking steps not to
become too hip for its own good.

It's mentioned below but boy did Agile fall into that trap. I now cringe when
I hear the word.

It sounds like Six Sigma is also in a self-destructive part of the cycle.

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baxtr
Really interesting article. Resonated with me.

Some thoughts

1) Consultancies have created a business model around that carrying
excellencies from client to the next

2) The most obvious concept coming into mind which was completely abused
through this is of course the whole agile (and increasingly OKRs...) movement

3) I still think it does make sense to generalize (not commoditize) concepts
and spread them, however there needs to be big disclaimers about context etc

4) A big part of management’s responsibility is to improve the organization
continuously, which can be done by getting inspiration how others have been
successful

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ptah
This has broader application than just technology. I think in all contexts it
is good to have a firm grasp of first principles and how to trace back any
commoditized excellence back to them. Also a good understanding of when to
apply "beginner's mind" to check if a bit of "expert knowledge" is actually
relevant

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L_Rahman
I especially enjoyed the meta recognition that the act of writing this article
and giving it a name itself possibly perpetuates the myth.

~~~
blaser-waffle
"Get Rich Now By Reading My Book!"

Book Advice: write books on how to get rich; sell books.

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bpyne
"need to belong"..."The tendency of people with this need is to weaponize The
Thing, and to wield it against those outside the movement and those they do
not deem as worthy of inclusion in the movement."

So many examples of this in daily life. People do amazingly vicious things to
validate their membership in a movement/tribe/religion/cult/etc.

~~~
mikelyons
This is how we survive. Survival is an incredibly deep topic, things people
typically think of as unnecessary like hatred are actually done for survival.
(not condoning it)

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closeparen
This description fits so perfectly with middle-management-driven org-wide
busywork exercises. "[Thing] is important and will take our work to the next
level. That is why we are implementing [naive approximation of Thing that
misses the point]. Given [Thing]'s importance, we expect you to prioritize
this and take it seriously."

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socceroos
A good article. Perhaps ironically, I would summarize the pivotal point of the
article as, "be sure your lies will find you out". You could rephrase it as
"deceitfulness will come back to bite you".

This applies even if you have good intentions. Honesty often comes with an
initial cost that makes people turn away.

~~~
phnofive
I wouldn’t call this kind of creep necessarily deceptive, but failing to
manage expectations has essentially the same effect as intentionally creating
hollow ones.

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hobofan
Reminds me a lot of "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution"[0],
which portraits very similar dynamics on a subculture level.

[0]: [https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-
sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths)

~~~
marcus_holmes
Yeah, that same identity dynamic at work. "I identify as a member of this
tribe", whether "this tribe" is about The Thing or anything else, leads to
weird human social stuff.

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bjornsing
There are truths that hold across cultural barriers. We call them
“Mathematics”. It’s the only commoditized excellence I know of.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Math "proofs" and empirical "evidence" mean that all humans who take an
interest in these things have compatible experiences.

Thinking they give us access to truth in some explicit objective universal
sense is naive - because we could just be cataloguing our most persistent
cognitive and perceptual habits.

~~~
kragen
The thing is that when people from totally different cultures do math, they
come to compatible conclusions. The algorithms in the Rhind Papyrus still
work, the ones we understand, anyway. And that's from 1000 years or more
before Euclid. This is not true of cooking, fashion, law, childrearing,
painting, or religion. So maybe there isn't an underlying objective truth
people observe mentally in math, but there's something that has some
properties shared by objective truth and not by other human inventions.

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hitekker
This article gets close to coining a new term in its description of a
lifecycle.

The front-end landscape is filled with these once-honest charlatans.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
Isn't it a mistake to conclude it can be avoided? To do so would be to fall
into the same trap.

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nigrioid
This is the exact trajectory of Rust.

