The Deming Institute
1 HN recommender · recommended in 5 months, 2016–2025
9:01 · 231K views · Feb 25, 2014
Excerpts from W. Edwards Deming's Red Bead Experiment, where workers draw beads from a bowl and are judged on red ones that are largely down to chance. It shows how system variation, not individual effort, drives results.
HN cites it as a classic illustration of dysfunctional management, gamed targets, and blaming workers for systemic outcomes.
5 comments from Hacker News
A similar example regarding quality is Dr Deming's famous Red Bead Experiment. It is a fascinating insight into how dysfunctional management systems operate and perpetuate. this video
Send your architect home to build a rocking chair over his weekend. See if he calls you back on Monday. A take home test is a very clear statement by management that your time is less important than their process. As a professional, you only have your time and skill as your saleable assets. You have the choice of giving them away for free. You could, of course, take the test and then present them a bill for your services. Another interesting question to ask would be: "How many of your senior management were hired as programmers who passed a whiteboard test or a take home test?" Clearly, according to the market myth, those who did pass were "the best and the brightest". It only stands to reason that upper management is composed of programmers. Ball-pits are in plain sight, if you choose to see. Ball-pit companies who whiteboard and use take home tests are also in plain sight, if you choose to see beyond the "best and brightest" market hype. I really respected a Lisp legendary programmer, Daniel Weinreb. He worked at ITA software on airline reservation software. We had many discussions. I'd love to have worked with him. But ITA has the same testing game and I couldn't convince myself to bother. I'm certain I could pass their tests. I've been programming in Lisp since the 1970s. And ITA was a 5-star restaurant kind of company. But those tests are a "Clown-Nose" warning to me. I just walked away. Walking away has a cost. But so does management games like quarterly status reviews,
Number 8, software estimates are complete nonsense. Read [LINK] I worked at a startup. Just before I was hired they bid on a fixed-cost 5 programmer, 5 month contract. After 10 programmers for 18 months they fired all of the (over 2 dozen) programmers and the company folded. At another startup I was given a project when the prior programmer left after 2 weeks. The project estimate was 8 weeks. I did an analysis (140 items, 4 of which had been completed) and estimated that the project would, at minimum, take over 6 months. The next day I was fired. IBM used to put out contract bids at 3 firms to build the frames for their mainframe computers. The independent bid estimates were delivered with time estimates within a day and costs with a penny. They delivered on time and on cost every time. Moral: If you have a repeatable task then you can provide an estimate. If you are doing a task for the first time, as most programmers are, then you CANNOT make a reasonable estimate. You can't even make a good guess. The only HONEST answer is "I don't know". Bob suggests providing 3 answers, minimum, likely, and maximum (aka NASA PERT charts). I tried that. The ONLY one management every hears is the minimum. They provide that number to the customer and record that as your target. Look at Edward Demming's work. Demming came up with principles that transformed Japan. Programming needs an Edward Demming. In fact, your job depends on your performance even on things you cannot control like estima
Given enough time. Yes, your surgeon has this attitude. Any system with a grade will be gamified to hit arbitrary targets. Even if those targets do not map back to customer value. Even if the targets are out of their control. Aka red beads. this video “Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, don’t complain about illogical behavior.” – Eli Goldratt
Oh man, that's what I've been smelling with all this. It's the Red Bead Experiment, all over again. this video