The Problem with Problems

http://000fff.org/the-problem-with-problems/

by veb • 11 years ago

61 19 11 years ago

000fff.org

paulus_magnus2• 11 years ago

Problem is there because someone is not willing to pay for solving it*

* sometimes (very rarely) there is money but no solutions exist

mgrennan3• 11 years ago

Maybe not so rarely. The tech bubble of some years back was money in search of a solution.

zaphar2• 11 years ago

While not directly the point of his article I found the example of time tracking to perfectly line up with my experience.

The hidden problem exists because there is a disconnect between the people who fill out those timesheets and the people who consume them.

The people who fill them out can't use the data. As a result the data is almost never correct and is largely useless and the people who consume them are picking out the wrong patterns from bad data.

The only reliable unit of measurement for time tracking is days spent. Anything else is measuring a largely made up number.

Further more they feed this idea that cramming at the end of a project is a good way shorten the time. Since you are tracking hours not days it's a short step to just upping the hours without upping the days as a short cut. But none of these apps give any data on the quality of those hours spent.

ThomPete5• 11 years ago

Author here.

Exactly and and so if people aren't aware of this it will just be considered annoying but just the way things are.

mgrennan3• 11 years ago

This is where passion for the work is a mark for quality. A person who loves what they are doing works long hours from the start and is never done because they always can make it better.

tempodox• 11 years ago

I realised long ago that the problematic quality of a problem stems solely from the perception that it represents a problem at all. If you consequently refuse to cast a situation as a problem, it ceases to be one.

jasode• 11 years ago

Another trigger for tech companies is "curiosity" instead of deliberate "problem-solving".

The software or hardware engineer "tinkers" with something simple. And then, a lightbulb goes off and the "toy" looks like it is well-suited to solving a particular problem.

Larry Page wasn't looking to solve a "problem of inefficient advertising expenses." He was satisfying an intellectual curiosity about applying the citations (e.g. Erdos #) in research papers to web pages. (One could argue that you could reformulate "The Problem" to be "retrieve more relevant weblinks than AltaVista" but for my example, I refer instead to the "ad dollars problem" because that's the one that pays Google's bills.)

Maybe it depends on the person. One type of person sees a "problem", then he/she deconstructs that into components and try to make a viable business. That's definitely where a lot of B2B businesses get started.

Another type of person simply tinkers and experiments and "solves problems" as a side effect.

ThomPete5• 11 years ago

Thats a very good point and I guess that sometimes you have a combination of someone who understands a problem and know off someone else who came up with something (maybe even from another field) and combine the two for a solution. I think there are plenty of examples of that although I can't remember anyone right now.

mgrennan3• 11 years ago

I have proof this is true. I have 35+ years experience in micro data processing. I have mentored several young people and seen them rocket to the top. I understand it is our nature to push away from parents to strike out on our own. I also understand why older people resist change. Magic happens when the young seek to understand the wisdom of their elders and elders hold on to explorer spirit of their youth.

ThomPete5• 11 years ago

You sir, just made my day.

michaelbuckbee• 11 years ago

I'd cast it more as looking for inefficient processes than as outright "problems" as most people who are not developers and doing their day to day jobs don't even perceive things as an issue so much as just how things are.

I've developed a few small software things that have saved people hours a week.

For example, I built a free tool [1] that lets you export a tagged subset of bookmarks from Pinboard into a nice format for inclusion in a webpage or Mailchimp newsletter. The person who I built this for wasn't really complaining about "gee, it takes me a couple hours to collect all these links, format them, etc." but when I saw their process, sheesh.

1 - http://www.bigbadassresourcelist.com

timdavila• 11 years ago

Neat tool! It would be nice to see some examples of the result somewhere on your site.

nine_k• 11 years ago

The key takeaway:

«It is my guess that there is a potential goldmine of problems we simply don’t know of because the people who are exposed to them aren’t connected with the people who have the opportunity and willingness to solve them. … Perhaps the real power of diversity in business isn’t hidden in gender but in age»

ThomPete5• 11 years ago

Yes.

I thought I wanted to take people through the thought process and the things I did to get there. Not sure if it worked, but it allowed me to get my thoughts down on paper.

jackgavigan2• 11 years ago

“Are the older and younger generations wildly underutilizing each other as resource?”

I actually think that the older generation is far better at utilizing the younger, than vice versa.

ThomPete5• 11 years ago

Perhaps, but the young just have the upper hand in todays market. They don't even have to solve real problems and still people are throwing money after them.

jackgavigan2• 11 years ago

Yes but the ones who figure out how to solve real problems (e.g. by teaming up with the older generation) will be far more successful than those who don't.

beat• 11 years ago

This touches on so many things I've been saying...

I describe really interesting problems as "fish don't know they live in water". The people who have the problem and deal with it every day don't even recognize that it's a solvable or that pain reduction is possible.

The Problem with Problems

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