[HN Gopher] Letter from the Carnation Company (1987)
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Letter from the Carnation Company (1987)
Author : zdw
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-04-22 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pleacher.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pleacher.com)
| mjb wrote:
| This is a really interesting example of half of a dynamic that
| constantly plays out in industry.
|
| One half is that first-order reasoning seldom leads to the
| "right" answer, and that optimization opportunities don't tend to
| be the obvious ones. Context matters, and optimizing for one
| thing almost always comes at the cost of other things. The "I can
| find the right answer without data because I'm smart and I have
| calculus/bayes theorem/whatever" folks are seldom right.
|
| The other half is that there's a lot of waste in industry because
| of missed opportunities for optimization, and companies that are
| good at going back to first principles and looking for those
| opportunities tend to be more successful in the long term. "We do
| it because of X" is often wrong, both because the initial reasons
| weren't always clearly analyzed (and often not quantified at
| all), and because the assumptions, underlying costs, etc have
| changed over time. We see this a lot in tech because the
| underlying costs change so much, but its true everywhere.
|
| These things are in tension, because first-order reasoning or
| "entitlement reasoning" is both often wrong, and often a great
| way to discover opportunities for large optimizations and new
| ways of thinking about problems. There's great value in rising
| above the context and complexity and reasoning things through
| using broader principles and simplified models.
|
| I suspect this dynamic will be with us forever. Falling too far
| in either direction leads to failure. If you ignore context,
| you'll be wrong on the specifics. If you get too lost in context,
| you'll miss big opportunities for optimization.
| gumby wrote:
| > I suspect this dynamic will be with us forever.
|
| The Internet has made clear the sheer number of economists who
| are also epidemiologists, constitutional scholars and military
| affairs scholars. This carnation letter could be considered a
| more whimsical and innocent example.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I really liked the Chesterton's Fence comment.
|
| This is a lesson for anyone interested in _shipping product_ ; as
| opposed to just _writing code_.
|
| Nothing spoils a good "first-order binge" like a nasty old speed
| bump of Second-Order Reality.
|
| I am actually going through exactly that kind of stuff, right
| this very minute, on a project that is approaching ship.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| This is a perfect example of how you can "easily find a solution
| that's better" when you are only looking at one aspect of the
| problem, and outsiders often don't have full insight into the
| varying factors.
|
| Disruption is still possible, but it's not as easy as you might
| think.
|
| Perhaps it's kind of a corollary to Chesterton's Fence; if
| everyone in an industry is doing something in a certain way,
| perhaps there's a reason you don't see.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think this is actually a great warning message to modern
| companies because of that factor. A lot of the products we're
| producing in the modern world are extremely complex and both
| risk and responsibility are delegated[1]. Since a single person
| isn't overseeing the concerns the question of whether each
| problem is dealt with with the weight appropriate is more a
| question of intra-company politics. You might, for instance,
| have the CEO hear that the price of material is expected to
| jump 10% in the next quarter and decree that the minimization
| of material costs should trump all other concerns. As all the
| engineers here might sympathize with, it can be hard to arrive
| at the optimal outcome when stakeholders have imperfect
| information and when imparting the additional information
| necessary is difficult to accomplish.
|
| 1. Possibly due to complexity alone, or possibly due to the
| employee power that confers, please break out tinfoil hats as
| appropriate.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I love that the conclusion includes this line:
|
| _These are just a few of the factors which must be taken into
| consideration when designing a can._
|
| We get five things covered but -- Wait! --there's more.
| bena wrote:
| The reason for the letter
|
| https://www.pleacher.com/mp/mlessons/calculus/catfood.html
| legitster wrote:
| This is before the influence of Steve Jobs who would have
| insisted on a 1:1 ratio can anyways and run up the manufacturing
| costs, raise consumer demand for them, and other manufacturers
| would be forced to copy suite.
|
| Tesla is a chief offender at this. Automakers have known for
| decades that touch screens and center gauges are usability
| nightmares. But then Tesla made it cool and now everyone has to
| do it. Or the over-engineered nightmare that is the gull-wing
| doors.
| hammock wrote:
| *If a 1:1 ratio served the consumer. There is a key difference.
|
| In OP example even the 1:1 request is based on cost of goods,
| not consumer utility
|
| Steve Jobs' mythologized demands were in service of the
| consumer, while shouldering the manufacturing burden inherent
| in them
| munk-a wrote:
| > Steve Jobs' mythologized demands were in service of the
| consumer, while shouldering the manufacturing burden inherent
| in them
|
| I think a citation is needed for this - my opinion is that in
| most cases Apple's design choices focused on doing things
| differently, whether that was an upgrade, sidegrade or
| downgrade. They tried to make sure their design choices were
| positive but there are enough examples of Apple changing
| things for seemingly no reason because they weren't broken.
| And a lot of other manufacturers followed suit because Apple
| remains a trend setter and consumers then started to demand
| the feature. It's less like leading a horse to water and more
| like leading a horse to a craps table and then assuming that
| because the horse likes you they'll consider that playing
| craps in the middle of the desert is a natural state.
|
| All that said, being different and being innovators was
| Apple's brand, so failing to deliver strange design decisions
| actually would fail to meet consumer expectations... the
| consumer didn't demand hockey puck mice, but they demanded
| something different from regular mice and delighted in the
| new shape (for a while, until the ergonomics of the mouse
| became clear - but for quite some time people really
| celebrated those mice, at least where I grew up)
| memetomancer wrote:
| In >my< opinion, it sounds kinda like you didn't read the
| Letter from the Carnation Company, or at least didn't quite
| grasp the point prior to rushing out your simplistic take
| and weird analogy about horses.
|
| Apple has surely never engaged in change-for-change's-sake
| as you are asserting. If you step back and consider all the
| factors in the changes they make - developing high quality
| materials, reducing size and weight, optimizing yields,
| durability, integration of technical advances like bus
| speeds, resolution and energy density, thermal
| characteristics... on and on, there are probably a
| thousands more factors that inform the changes they make to
| any given product.
|
| Not whatever hand-wavey dismissal you are asserting here.
| Sometimes their industrial design misses the mark, such as
| with the hockey puck mouse, or the charge port on the
| current mouse, but these are fairly rare when contrasted
| against the full spectrum of their ever evolving products.
|
| And that's the whole point of that letter from Carnation.
| There is a lot more going on behind the scenes that drive
| these engineering decisions. Simply writing them off with a
| simple take totally misses the mark.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You mean, like with the butterfly keyboard?
|
| Or the glued-shut, unrepairable gadgets?
|
| Or "Maybe you're holding it wrong"? Or firing the antenna
| guy after?
|
| Or trying to eliminate cursor arrow keys so users would
| have to _always_ use the mouse?
|
| The mouse charge port that makes it unusable while
| charging is far from an isolated example. Apple changing
| something to actually benefit the customer _at the
| expense of Apple_ is almost unheard of.
| vkou wrote:
| > *If a 1:1 ratio served the consumer. There is a key
| difference.
|
| Please keep in mind that the same Steve Jobs championed the
| abomination that was the hockey-puck mouse.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| That mouse was an indelible part of the feeling of "this is
| _new_ and _fun_ " that Steve and Jonny were trying to
| create with the original iMac.
|
| Of course they could have used a different shape from a
| hockey puck. The most important thing was that the mouse be
| new and fun-looking, to match the novel case design.
|
| The iMac's design was important because it declared that
| Apple was on a new trajectory (no more boring beige boxes),
| and thus promised more new and wonderful things were on the
| way.
| bitwize wrote:
| My girlfriend loves that mouse, and considers it exemplary
| of Apple's tasteful, fun design. She still has hers.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I don't use it anymore, but loved the puck mouse too.
| hammock wrote:
| Forgot about that. Maybe if enough people/generations use
| the mouse, our hands will start morphing to a more
| appropriate shape?
| jedberg wrote:
| That hockey puck mouse was perfect for kids' hands, one of
| the key target audiences for the iMac it came with.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| He was quite often, wrong. People seem to forget that. I've
| never counted, but I'll bet he had more failures, than
| successes; It's just that his successes were _big_
| successes.
|
| He had absolute power, so he was able to create fairly
| "pure" renditions of his vision; for good or ill.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| This is both a very fun letter and a great introduction to how
| something that is "obvious" to the non-practitioner ("A square
| ratio can obviously uses less material so is obviously better!")
| can be totally wrong.
|
| So the next time you see an article on hacker news where the
| solution to some problem seems overly complicated, and you want
| to say, "Why not just do X?" Think about the ratio between height
| and width of a cat food can and evaluate whether you might be
| missing something.
| samch wrote:
| Related, this is a great example of why I'm skeptical when an
| analyst tells me they've done a "5 Whys" exercise to identify
| the root of an issue / optimization problem. The process
| follows a path to a solution with horse blinders intentionally
| on. If, in this case, the issue was the high use of steel, an
| analyst might drill down to the time it takes to retool or
| switch over a production line as the root cause of needing to
| use more than the ideal ratio. Clearly, however, the reality is
| much more complex.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| The real trick to root cause analysis is not to find a
| straight chain of 5 "whys" but to find a _tree_ of whys and
| examine the leaf nodes. One path from root to tip would
| resemble a "5 whys" (but potentially be longer or shorter)
| but stopping when you've found a single item to fix is doing
| yourself a disservice.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| This 1000x. It's particularly interesting if leaf nodes are
| allowed to continue branching into uncomfortable or
| organizationally taboo subjects (like culture or leadership
| problems), and if the same problems appear multiple times
| as leaf nodes. _Then_ you know you 're really getting
| somewhere.
| samstave wrote:
| Where may I read more about this, or have the correct
| terms to look into?
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Actually that would be 3125x
| maroon-ranger wrote:
| Definitely guilt of championing (and perhaps even over-
| leveraging) the 5 why's myself. What do you think is a
| structured & repeatable way of drilling down to the kind of
| layered insights here?
| samch wrote:
| I see a fishbone activity as somewhat the reverse of the
| five whys. Instead of starting broad and narrowing focus
| down a singular path, the fishbone takes the problem and
| looks at all the contributing factors:
|
| https://asq.org/quality-resources/fishbone
|
| I'm not an expert by any means. Just offering a suggestion.
| maroon-ranger wrote:
| Wow this is great. I could see how using this framework
| could lead you to identify the same factors in the
| article (assuming you had similar domain knowledge).
|
| I think the next hurdle would be coming up with a
| solution that sufficiently addresses these root causes.
| happimess wrote:
| I get a lot of mileage out of one deeply-considered why.
| bin_bash wrote:
| > So the next time you see an article on hacker news where the
| solution to some problem seems overly complicated, and you want
| to say, "Why not just do X?"
|
| I don't understand your takeaway. This is an example of someone
| asking the obvious question and getting an interesting answer,
| which is what happens on HN. It sounds like you're asking
| people to withhold asking these questions.
| nosequel wrote:
| That's not my experience on HN, or with tech folks in
| general. There will be a long article about some particularly
| hard thing, be it energy storage, GPS, or cat food can
| design, and comments will roll in, "simply do X".
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| Reminds me of the saying: In theory, theory and practice are the
| same.
| abakker wrote:
| or the variation, "the difference between practice and theory
| is bigger in practice than theory"
|
| An absolute gem of a statement.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I love this because it's such a great example of the contrast
| between fragile academic theorizing vs skin-in-the-game doing.
| Naturally, the one with skin in the game prevails.
| auspex wrote:
| Very similar to how a naive pair of eyes on an application says:
| "we can rewrite this entire application in 6 months. I don't know
| what they previous coders were doing. This thing is so bloated"
|
| They are missing all the details and nuance that get them to
| where they are today.
|
| Of course this isn't always the case. Sometimes an application is
| just terribly designed.
| smm11 wrote:
| Hello protein powder companies.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Everybody's commenting on the details of the letter and not the
| fact that the letter got written at all, or by whom ("assistant
| product manager"). Nowadays the only interaction you'll have with
| a company is their snarky "social media manager" trying to
| compete with Wendy's Twitter in the category of "sick burns".
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