Parkinson's Law

What Hacker News says

1. richeyrwJan 2013
   Parkinson's Law may be the greatest business book of all time. If you like business books and you haven't read it you're missing out on one of the true classics of the genre.

   http://www.amazon.com/Parkinsons-Law-C-Northcote-Parkinson/d...

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2. sturadnidgeDec 2012
   "Parkinson's Law" by C. Northcote Parkinson

   "The New Industrial State" by J.K. Galbraith

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3. mechanical_fishJan 2011
   The remaining question (posed in the top-rated answer) is: Why didn't anyone else build Dropbox first?

   At the risk of shameless karma whoring, I hypothesize that the problem had to be attacked by a company of the correct size. Most bigger companies can't build Dropbox because to release a product like Dropbox one has to run a gauntlet of middle managers, and it's hard to get a roomful of software professionals to sign on to something that (a) is difficult to build and requires a lot of painstaking attention to detail, yet (b) can be described in three sentences.

   It's just hard to talk about a simple, elegant mission in those ubiquitous meetings. People ask how the project is going, and you have three things you can say:

   A) "No, the folder doesn't sync yet."

   B) "Yes, the folder syncs."

   C) "No, the folder doesn't sync because of this particular small issue with this obscure API call in this obscure library on this obscure version of Linux blah blah blah TECH TECH TECH yes I'm so sorry too much detail I will shut up now."

   So pretty much all you can do is smile serenely. This is a big strategic disadvantage. Even a medium-sized company features multiple projects. The projects fight for resources: people, budget, management attention. They may fight in a very friendly and even above-board way, the way siblings fight for attention, but they do fight. And the project that tacks on more and more requirements gets to claim more and more resources, because, hey, requirements are hard! Bigger checklists require bigger teams, and bigger teams require bigger budgets, and more management attention. Add features! Attach a marketing campaign! Bolt it on to a much larger brand!

   I need to go read Parkinson's Law again. A work of genius.

   Anyway, Dropbox succeeded by designing a company where the mission of "building Dropbox and making it succeed" was both necessary and sufficient.

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4. User23Jun 2023
   Because of how much time and money is spent on deciding the color of the bike shed of course![1]

   [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1448236.Parkinson_s_Law

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5. dredmorbiusDec 2022
   Is that in chapter 5 of his book (Parkinson's Law) by chance?

   If not, could you at least point to the source?

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6. pdonisJan 2016
   The bikeshed example is also somewhat misstated. In the original (fictional) story from the book Parkinson's Law, the issue is not that people looking at the design of a nuclear plant spend too much time looking at the bike shed design and not enough looking at things like nuclear safety. The issue is that the committee trying to decide whether various projects should be funded at all spends only about two and a half minutes in approving an expenditure of $10 million on a nuclear reactor, but spends about forty-five minutes arguing about the design of a bike shed, with the possible result of saving some $300. (They then spend an hour and a quarter arguing about whether to provide coffee for monthly meetings of the administrative staff, which amounts to a total annual expenditure of $57, and refuse to make a decision at all, directing the secretary to obtain further information so they can decide at the next meeting.)

   The point being that "bikeshedding" is not (just) about what parts of a project to pay attention to, but which projects to pay attention to. Spend more time and effort paying attention to projects where there is more value at stake.

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