Interesting, this also shows up in business as “the innovators dilemma”. Small businesses are willing to explore riskier technologies that are only profitable to smaller segments (exploration). Eventually, they can exploit this and find ways to make that technology palatable to larger audiences (exploitation). As they get bigger, they can’t justify going after technologies with small audiences because it doesn’t help their bottom line (slack destroyed).
Eventually, they get replaced by the next firm who went through the loop.
I don’t think that’s all there is to it. Big firms have R&D. (Indeed, I have been told that big firms target spending specific percentages on R&D because spending too much or too little looks bad and would make their stocks go down, or something like that.)
I think big firms get eaten by Moloch in some fashion (lost purposes turn everything fake?), whereas startups have nicely aligned incentives (because it’s worth nothing unless it succeeds, so weird internal power dynamics are not that valuable to fight over compared to fighting for the common goal).
Yeah I think there are a lot of forces working in parallel:
Inertia of Bigger Companies
Drive to Short-Term Profits
Hard to invest in early stage ventures because expense can’t be justified.
Lack of Pioneers
There’s just more startups than big companies.
Big firms have R&D.
Yes but the stages from early stage exploratory R & D → Profitable company are rarely there. Most of the large company R & D products that succeed are either fast follow (creating a product in a space where there’s already proven demand) or come from turning internal tools into products (so the expense doesn’t need to be justified).
It’s very hard for large companies to keep around exploratory projects that are profitable to a very small market, and iterating around that small market long enough for the technology to be ready for a larger market. If created at all (when you can’t justify a larger market) they tend to get the plug pulled to early. Hard to justify putting people on a project that’s barely eeking by
At first, you are voluntarily exploiting the good opportunity because… well, because the rewards are good. You get lots of money and/or respect. And you can keep getting it, if you continue this line of work.
Then the hedonistic treadmill makes you less happy again, but the work continues consuming your time.
Even worse, the situation may be unsustainable, because your existing skills may become obsolete, and you have no time to get new ones.
One option is to wait until the bitter end, or rather until the moment the skill is still profitable but only a little, so the opportunity cost of learning a new skill is now sufficiently low. How exactly this works out depends on the shape of the skill profitability curve. (I heard that people coding in Cobol still make lots of money, despite the shrinking market for their skill, because the supply of their skill shrinks even faster.)
Second option is to predict this moment, and decide to jump ship in advance. You give up the tail of the old curve, but you get to ride the peak of the new one. There is a certain risk involved: you know how good you are at the old skill, but you can only guess how good you will be at the new one.
Third option is to resist the pressure and decide that no matter what happens, you will keep spending e.g. 10% of your time learning and practicing new things (specifically: new things unrelated to your currently most profitable skill; as opposed to deepening the skill or learning adjacent skills). Note: I didn’t put this option last to suggest that it is the best one. It really depends. In case of the Cobol developer who is five years away from retirement, spending 10% of time learning unrelated technologies is probably a waste of time. Also, it depends on what is intrinsically interesting for you: maybe you still enjoy the old skill only not as much as before, or maybe it turned into a chore and you hate it but you need the money.
In some sense, this is a paradox of (Pareto-) optimal behavior. If you frame it as “this is the best you could do” it sounds great, but if you frame it as “any change will only make things worse” it sounds ominous. Yet it is the same thing.
Slack enables exploration.
Exploration enables exploitation.
Exploitation destroys slack.
Wow, this comment alone makes writing the entire post worth it.
Interesting, this also shows up in business as “the innovators dilemma”. Small businesses are willing to explore riskier technologies that are only profitable to smaller segments (exploration). Eventually, they can exploit this and find ways to make that technology palatable to larger audiences (exploitation). As they get bigger, they can’t justify going after technologies with small audiences because it doesn’t help their bottom line (slack destroyed).
Eventually, they get replaced by the next firm who went through the loop.
I don’t think that’s all there is to it. Big firms have R&D. (Indeed, I have been told that big firms target spending specific percentages on R&D because spending too much or too little looks bad and would make their stocks go down, or something like that.)
I think big firms get eaten by Moloch in some fashion (lost purposes turn everything fake?), whereas startups have nicely aligned incentives (because it’s worth nothing unless it succeeds, so weird internal power dynamics are not that valuable to fight over compared to fighting for the common goal).
Yeah I think there are a lot of forces working in parallel:
Inertia of Bigger Companies
Drive to Short-Term Profits
Hard to invest in early stage ventures because expense can’t be justified.
Lack of Pioneers
There’s just more startups than big companies.
Yes but the stages from early stage exploratory R & D → Profitable company are rarely there. Most of the large company R & D products that succeed are either fast follow (creating a product in a space where there’s already proven demand) or come from turning internal tools into products (so the expense doesn’t need to be justified).
It’s very hard for large companies to keep around exploratory projects that are profitable to a very small market, and iterating around that small market long enough for the technology to be ready for a larger market. If created at all (when you can’t justify a larger market) they tend to get the plug pulled to early. Hard to justify putting people on a project that’s barely eeking by
Am I being exploited by other pressures, or am I the one exploiting a single (good) opportunity to the cost of my slack?
At first, you are voluntarily exploiting the good opportunity because… well, because the rewards are good. You get lots of money and/or respect. And you can keep getting it, if you continue this line of work.
Then the hedonistic treadmill makes you less happy again, but the work continues consuming your time.
Even worse, the situation may be unsustainable, because your existing skills may become obsolete, and you have no time to get new ones.
One option is to wait until the bitter end, or rather until the moment the skill is still profitable but only a little, so the opportunity cost of learning a new skill is now sufficiently low. How exactly this works out depends on the shape of the skill profitability curve. (I heard that people coding in Cobol still make lots of money, despite the shrinking market for their skill, because the supply of their skill shrinks even faster.)
Second option is to predict this moment, and decide to jump ship in advance. You give up the tail of the old curve, but you get to ride the peak of the new one. There is a certain risk involved: you know how good you are at the old skill, but you can only guess how good you will be at the new one.
Third option is to resist the pressure and decide that no matter what happens, you will keep spending e.g. 10% of your time learning and practicing new things (specifically: new things unrelated to your currently most profitable skill; as opposed to deepening the skill or learning adjacent skills). Note: I didn’t put this option last to suggest that it is the best one. It really depends. In case of the Cobol developer who is five years away from retirement, spending 10% of time learning unrelated technologies is probably a waste of time. Also, it depends on what is intrinsically interesting for you: maybe you still enjoy the old skill only not as much as before, or maybe it turned into a chore and you hate it but you need the money.
In some sense, this is a paradox of (Pareto-) optimal behavior. If you frame it as “this is the best you could do” it sounds great, but if you frame it as “any change will only make things worse” it sounds ominous. Yet it is the same thing.
I read it as the latter.