Ethan A. Maffey

Wilco / Prince / Red Sox / Patriots / Coffee / Fernet / Maui / The Thing Solo Comics / Corrector of Mistakes

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@LouScatagliaPO which is it? Did ChatGPT write this?

[Andrew Wilkinson @awilkinson]

Elon Musk fired 6,500 employees at Twitter.

A little birdie told me it's down to:

- 2 designers
- 6 iOS developers
- 20 web developers
- Around 1,400 sales and operations people

How is it possible that we are still using this website?

Two words:

Parkinson's Law.

Have you ever wondered why seemingly simple tech companies have tens of thousands of employees?

Sometimes, it's because they have huge sales forces or tech support/operations people.

But often it's also due to Parkinson's Law.

Parkinson's law is like lighter fluid for bureaucracy.

It's a business tapeworm that slowly eats away at companies, making them less and less efficient and innovative over time.

Parkinson's Law is the idea that the work will generally expand to the amount of time, budget, and number of people allocated to it, and no matter how many people you allocate to it, those people will feel busy.

They'll feel busy because, due to the excess time/slack in the system, they'll start focusing on less and less important tasks.

Here's how it manifests on an individual level:

Let's say you have a report due in a week.

The report might only take you around five hours to finish if you really focus and work efficiently. However, because you know you have a week to complete it, you might find yourself spending a lot more time on it than you need to.

You'll be more prone to distractions, take longer breaks, or perhaps decide to add more details, tables, graphs, and so forth.

Essentially, the task becomes more complex and time-consuming purely because you have more time in which to do it.

And here's how it manifests across organizations:

Imagine a big tech company. A social media company with various departments. Each department has tasks that it must complete to contribute to the overall productivity of the company.

Now, suppose each department is given a budget and a set amount of time to complete its tasks for the year.

According to Parkinson's Law, each department will use its entire budget and the entire allotted time, even if the tasks could have been completed more efficiently.

This is because as resources and time increase, departments tend to become more complex and less efficient.

For example, a department might add more steps to its procedures, requiring more approvals and creating more paperwork, which slows down the process.

Or it might use the full budget on additional personnel or equipment that doesn't necessarily improve productivity.

The department might also use the full budget to justify the same or larger budget for the next year, since budgets in many organizations are often determined based on the previous year's spending.

This is a phenomenon known as "budget padding" or "spend it or lose it" mentality.

Inefficiencies can also develop in staff allocation. If a department expands, it might add managerial positions that aren't strictly necessary.

More employees are hired to manage, creating layers of bureaucracy that may not contribute to productivity and can even slow decision-making.

I have seen this occur over and over again in my career. The larger the team, the larger the budget, the longer the timeline, the less gets accomplished.

I'm very curious to see how many more tech companies come to this realization.

So often, good times + revenue growth = Parkinson's Law.

[Hunter Butler @ThStructuresGuy]

@ProFootballTalk no disrespect to the designers, but man I hate your new website - so much wasted space. Go back to the older version please.

[YGH @yunggohards]

@ProFootballTalk nbc dropped the ball like melvin gordon, the site sucks now... i'm still team florio and go back longer than sam fransico, but sheesh it's bad

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@D6plus @dcowboy777 @PFTPMPosse @ProFootballTalk Spot on.

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@ProFootballTalk seriously... Awful website redesign.

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@TheSpun maybe get a writer who knows that NFL teams can't lose to themselves...

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@shanlee My wife wanted to try for a girl and she got one...

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

Not trying to be insensitive here because no parent should bury their child but Beau Biden died in the United States of brain cancer about 6 years after his military service ended. This seems like a concerning thing to forget…

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

Here are some recent Abiomed success stories they’ve been promoting. People with myocarditis. Any questions? How anyone can look at these puzzle pieces, put them together and not feel TOTAL contempt for Big Pharma is beyond me. You being sick is literally their lifeblood.

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

I’m not surprised that a COVID vaccine maker is diversifying their business by buying a heart pump company. I’m just surprised Pfizer didn’t do it first. Guess what Abiomed has been advertising recently? Treatments for myocarditis which you can get from the COVID vax.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Biden social media geniuses are giving Biden credit for the biggest Social Security COLA in 10 years, but neglect to mention that SS COLA is an automatic formula based on government inflation metric (CPI). 🤦‍♂️

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

Joe Biden claims he spoke to the guy who invented insulin. Insulin wasn’t invented, it’s a natural hormone discovered by a guy named Frederick Banting who died in Feb. 1941. Joe Biden was born in Nov. 1942. Joe’s either lying, totally insane or both.

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

The last thing you ate is its name.

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

A @timwendelboe coffee all for me. (Honduras ➡️ Oslo ➡️ Cashmere, WA)

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@YankeeMike015 @JasonStrummer He even played for the Bend Elks!

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@JasonStrummer He once played baseball for the Bend Elks in Oregon.

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

Clearly the algorithm has gotten quite aggressive in my absence.

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

@JBLiskh #metoo

[Ethan A. Maffey @ethos83]

Hello Twitter. It's been a bit.