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Comment by Mimmy | Hacker News Reader

I generally like his essays, but is there anything substantive here?

He doesn't define smart. He doesn't define what it means to get stuff done. He doesn't convince me that there are a lot of dumb people getting stuff done. If there are, he doesn't convince me that they are much of a problem (hypothetical good teachers that teach ignorance isn't an argument, it's not even an anecdote). And even if they are a problem, he doesn't offer a solution.

If anyone was able to takeaway anything useful from this article, please share.

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I have seen people honestly suggest that it doesn't matter exactly what they're adding to the software, or how they add it, as long as they're adding something that someone else sort of asked for.

I think this post might be useful for those people – a way to suggest "but what if not?"

I agree and also think the author did a wrong turn somewhere after the original quote. One point of the quote roughly translated into the modern office is that dumb managers that create pointless busywork for others are part of big corporations and all together not a big deal as long as they are lazy dumb managers. Energetic dumb managers on the other hand may create a neverending spiral of problems and need to be watched carefully.

(On a sidenote there are several versions of the quote attributed to German generals - Moltke the elder, von Mannstein and von Hammerstein-Equord and I think most of them are better).

I have indeed encountered numerous individuals proclaiming the mantra of "any action is better than inaction," leading inevitably to the notion that "more actions equate to greater efficacy."

In reality, countless establishments still uphold the belief that the measure of "lines of code" serves as a suitable yardstick for gauging "productivity," even in unexpected contexts.

The key lesson to be gleaned from this is the need to convey this concept in a manner comprehensible to executives, who often grasp the intricacies of warfare terminology and analogies.

Agreed. He’s unnecessarily conflating “fast” and “bad”. Often times people move quickly because they know what they’re doing, not because they’re mindlessly flailing.

The attempt to characterize the two traits as inseparable is like drawing a picture of a <demographic_x> robbing a store and showing it to people like “See how awful <demographic_x> is?”. There’s no actual evidence, it’s just a baseless assertion.

It’s an article for people to validate their biases.

It’s deliberately empty so that people put in stupid, smart, lazy, energetic whoever they deem belongs there.

I'd go as far as to say that those of us posting on HN on a Wednesday consider ourselves both clever and lazy - I do! - and so the joke is little more than puffery bait.

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