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by watters 992 days ago
It's almost as if the typical contemporary "knowledge work" shop has completely discarded ergonomics, industrial engineering, and library science as potential sources of wisdom about how to construct effective socio-technical systems because they don't have a clear, straight-line, first-order effect on profit.
2 comments

It's astounding to me how much IE 101 info is just totally absent from software shops. I think it's because nobody who doesn't major in it really knows what industrial engineering is, or just how far the field itself can extend.

I wish there was a Freakonomics or Algorithms to Live By for IE.

I like the way you expressed first-order effect on profit. It’s difficult to convey such effects to people that don’t understand them.