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Comment by avhception | Hacker News Reader

There was a story on HN a while ago that I can't seem to remember the title of.

It was something along the lines of "The optimal amount of slack in an organization is not zero", or something like that.

The argument was that, since it's impossible to plan for every eventuality, you need a certain amount of slack capacity in order to retain some flexibility. And that by always using 100% capacity, we end up dysfunctional.

I think the same is true for our personal lives.

But the endless treadmill of self-optimization, side-hustles and ever more commitments leaves us unable to cope.

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I think it referred to the classic efficiency vs latency tradeoff. Like when emergency vehicles are always on standby, which is inefficient, but allows them to roll out without delay. Conversely privatised rail lines squeeze out every ounce of capacity from the infrastructure resulting in delays when something, anything goes even slightly wrong.

I use this extensively when planning activities with my children. It's a fun challenge because they're both too young to tell the time, much less read, which are constraints one does not normally encounter in their work life.

I agree efficiency vs latency, but it's also "exploit vs explore" balance, work/life balance and more, leaving time for research, exploration, shooting the sh*t, decorating the office, buying christmas gifts at lunchtime, helping out co-workers etc.

I think "slack" is a much more general concept than efficiency vs latency. The slack itself allows low-latency response to emergencies but the activities that fill the slack time can be valuable in ways that often aren't legible to the org hierarchy.

It was the same problem for JIT supply chains falling apart during COVID.

It's very hard to sell slack to management and so in "well run organizations" it ends up trending towards zero. And then everyone is surprised at the resulting catastrophes.

It's pretty simple no, the model that is reasonable and antifragile is within our grasp, a model that includes degrees of error more than it reifies hewing towards 0 carrying costs. It's more the good will and good faith across the board to use that known simple math, as sneaky monkey minds in our midst see that if they defect they can win some edge in the short term (and again, a better model shows the true utility and total harmed effect) and then it's a race to the bottom and a world of basically the prisoners dilemma. Making that thinking anathema in human culture should be the focus. I don't know that a grass roots effort could out-compete existing networks of power and influence, nor that a total reset of players is possible either.

It's aligning the incentives of top management with the slightly longer term outcomes. If stock grants are based on this quarter's performance, "slack" seems much less important.

Exactly, if you get rewarded for the 5% improvements annually but are out before the once-a-decade near death experiences.. you end up with more Intels, GMs, Boeings, etc.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

I find this article a nice exploration of slack concept in personal lives

https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/38-slack

I can't help you with the title, but with another paragraph from that story, should you want to find it. Paraphrasing from memory:

> When you are in a major Chinese city you may street sweepers sitting on the side walk chitchatting. The first thing you may think of it as waste that could be eliminated. But it also acts as a buffer.

I think you might be referring to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41952570

Tom DeMarco wrote a book about this some years ago, called... "Slack".

I found the book Margin by Richard Swenson to be helpful.

TL;DR: Pretty much what you said, but he labeled it "margin" instead of "slack". But yeah, you need some.

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