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Comment by Grustaf | Hacker News Reader

To me the worst Jobs inspired cargo cult effect is that everyone is suddenly obsessed with details and thinks that OCD is cool, "omg I can't stand that kerning, it's half a pixel off, it stresses me out."

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I remember being really annoyed at one of my bosses for obsessing about fonts in a game online store I was working on. It's like ... really? ... we're strapped for time and we have time for this? The thing is, unlike some other bosses, he asked nicely, and he was a great guy. So I felt like ... okay ... for you I'll do it.

There is something to the general strategy of insisting on excellence, and not being willing to let something go until it's just so. This can lead down idiosyncratic unproductive rabbit holes, but especially for design-based products and games it's important to maintain a culture of excellence.

Wrt to games and entertainment products, there's no metric like "reduced clicks to perform task by 1.5". So you're ideally trying to optimize for joy, or enjoyment. Since you can't really quantify it, you can at least try to substitute excellent craftsmanship as a proxy.

As a counter-example, when I was at Sago Mini, I was getting incredibly nitpicky and subjective feedback about the precise way in which to procedurally animate sheafs of wheat in a field in a game for toddlers. While the same culture of quality and branding concerns apply, this felt like a waste of time past the first few iterations.

> As a counter-example, when I was at Sago Mini, I was getting incredibly nitpicky and subjective feedback about the precise way in which to procedurally animate sheafs of wheat in a field in a game for toddlers. While the same culture of quality and branding concerns apply, this felt like a waste of time past the first few iterations.

For what it's worth, as the parent of a 5 year old who has loved Sago mini, the quality, care, and polish in the game/app and the subscription boxes has definitely shone through (I'm an iOS dev myself). Which is not to say that it was taken too far internally. Just remarking that the work you and others did there hasn't gone unnoticed, despite it being a game for toddlers.

Thanks, glad the games brought joy to you and yours. Craft and quality are certainly central to Sago's branding.

Frankly, I'm a bit annoyed at them as they let me go just before the end of a long probationary period. They were totally happy to use me and my photogenic daughters for a Father's Day twitter post. When the project I was on hit a snag, my immediate manager overreacted and let me go, to the surprise of me and the other senior developers. Recently, during the George Floyd hand-wringing their CEO (who I think was not particularly involved in the events I've described) reached out to me on how to attract and retain diverse talent. I felt like replying "Dunno -- don't fire diverse talent for BS reasons?"

My kids still remember the awesome time they had visiting the Sago office and ask me why I don't work there any more.

Anyhoo ... that's games.

EDIT> Oh wow, 2017. I had put that away in a box. Got laid off, got dumped by brainy hot summer fling girlfriend, and got divorce papers finalized all in like a 3 month period. Good times. Not bitter.

There's a tradeoff here. While obsessing over small details can take you away from more important work, it's also something that you can build up an instinct in your craft for and the actual cost in productivity drops precipitously. IMO it's important to make a practice of these type of things and a culture of excellence can pay off in the long run, as a culture of cutting corners can often end up cutting the wrong corners.

I can see why you’d be frustrated by that but I don’t think I’d attribute it to cargo culting. I’m like that myself but not because I was inspired by anyone else to be that way - I just like building really precise experiences.

I guess there are probably folks thing that see it on TV and decide to play the role without any authenticity, though.

Perhaps I only notice it more now, but it seems like it exploded after he died and after all those stories of looking at pixels in loupes and making the back of cabinets look good became public.

I imagined that people think that they just need to copy this characteristic and they'll also be successful.

I had a job doing that involved form layout for printed forms that would get used by tens of thousands. My boss could likewise spot things off by a single pixel. At first I was annoyed, but the bigger the audience for your work, the more those details matter. I’d further say this is the polish that should be part of a “one more thing to do” attitude if you want to produce your best output. It’s all context though. Devote attention proportional to the size of the audience.

Oh I’m not opposed to being detailed oriented, I just got the feeling that people started using their imaginary OCD as a flex lately, and that some founders think it’s the secret to success, when it’s actually at most a hygiene factor.

I put a lot of attention to detail myself, but I don’t imagine that this in itself is worth anything. It’s only one out of a multitude of things you need to do and be as a founder, and it’s among the easiest.

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