

A loose rant on maximization - mh_
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3434-a-loose-rant-on-maximization

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robotresearcher
"Am I interested in increasing profits? Yes. Revenues? Yes? Being more
productive? Yes. Making our products easier, faster, and more useful? Yes.
Making our customers and employees happier? Yes, absolutely. Do I love
iterating and improving? Yes sir."

Iterated local improvement is a hill-climbing approximate maximization
strategy. If you don't know what the cost space looks like, it might be the
best maximization strategy available.

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JCraig
I have a great respect for the attitude that goes into running 37 Signals.
Making something simple, enjoyable, and useful is much more concrete, from a
development standpoint, than making something "the best". It also allows 37
Signals to sidestep the trap of defining oneself by competitors. This seems to
allow them to spend their energy on making their products and their lives
good.

Jason Fried has talked before about the importance of making things simple and
easy. Simple and easy to use are hard to categorize as "best" when selling a
product to customers or investors. Having more features, doing more work,
saying "yes" more often gives you easier metrics to claim "best", but they
often lead to overly-complex and difficult to use products and harried,
stressed, unhappy employees.

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guan
Based on this post, I’m sure we can come up with some kind of function that he
is maximizing.

