| ▲ | old-gregg 7 days ago |
| Fun story time! Early in my career as a software engineer, I developed a reputation for speeding things up. This was back in the day where algorithm knowledge was just as important as the ability to examine the output of a compiler, every new Intel processor was met with a ton of anticipation, and Carmak and Abrash were rapidly becoming famous. Anyway, the 22 year old me unexpectedly gets invited to a customer meeting with a large multinational. I go there not knowing what to expect. Turns out, they were not happy with the speed of our product. Their VP of whatever said, quoting: "every saved second here adds $1M to our yearly profit". I was absolutely floored. Prior to that moment I couldn't even dream of someone placing a dollar amount on speed, and so directly. Now 20+ years later it still counts as one of the top 5 highlights of my career. P.S. Mentioning as a reaction to the first sentence in the blog post. But the author is correct when she states that this happens rarely. P.P.S. There was another engineer in the room, who had the nerve to jokingly ask the VP: "so if we make it execute in 0 seconds, does it mean you're going to make an infinite amount of money?". They didn't laugh, although I thought it was quite funny. Hey, Doug! :) |
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| ▲ | adwn 7 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > "so if we make it execute in 0 seconds, does it mean you're going to make an infinite amount of money?" I don't get it. Wouldn't going from 1 second to 0 seconds add the same amount of money to the yearly profit as going from 2 seconds to 1 second did? Namely, $1M. |
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| ▲ | old-gregg 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I don't get it. Wouldn't going from 1 second to 0 seconds add the same amount of money to the yearly profit as going from 2 seconds to 1 second did? Namely, $1M Of course the joke was silly. But perhaps I should have provided some context. We were making industrial automation software. This stuff runs in factories. Every saved second shrinks the manufacturing time of a part, leading to increase of the total factory output. When extrapolating to abusrd levels, zero time to manufacture means infinite output per factory (sans raw materials). | |
| ▲ | stronglikedan 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | yeah it's one of those things that are funny to the people saying it because they don't yet realize it doesn't make sense. I bet they felt that later, in the hotel room, in the shower, probably with a bottle of scotch. | | |
| ▲ | Otek 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I bet they felt that later, in the hotel room, in the shower, probably with a bottle of scotch. Geez, life in my opinion is not so serious. It’s okay to say stupid things and not feel bad about it, as long as you are not trying to hurt anyone. I bet they felt great and immediately forgot about this bad joke. | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Their joke could have also been interpreted as sarcasm and when you’re going to be sarcastic you want to be doubly sure that you’re correct. But I also concur with you that it is good to bring some levity to “serious” conversations!! | | | |
| ▲ | ThrowawayR2 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not in front of an executive of an important customer, it isn't. They are remarkably humorless about making money. |
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| ▲ | betterhealth12 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | earlier in my career it'd be appealing to make jokes like that, or include a comment in an email. eventually you realize that people - especially "older" or those already a few years into their career - mostly don't want to joke around and just want to actually get the thing done you are meeting about. | | | |
| ▲ | 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | flobosg 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A process taking 0 seconds means that, in one year, it can be run 31540000 sec/0 sec = ∞ times, multiplying the profit by ∞. | | |
| ▲ | willsmith72 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Since when is the constraint "how many times can I run this thing"? | | |
| ▲ | zahlman 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In principle, the reason that "every second saved here is worth $x" is because running the thing generates money, and saving time on it allows for running it more often. | |
| ▲ | lblume 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | At least in theoretical computer science, often, but that's another matter entirely. |
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| ▲ | emmelaich 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Working with a task scheduling system, we were told that every minute a airplane is delayed costs $10k. This was back in the 90s, so adjust accordingly. |
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| ▲ | 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | felideon 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So, did you make it faster? |
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| ▲ | old-gregg 7 days ago | parent [-] | | Unfortunately, there wasn't a single bottleneck. A bunch of us, not just me, worked our asses off improving performance by a little bit in several places. The compounded improvement IIRC was satisfactory to the customer. |
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| ▲ | ensemblehq 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| RE: P.P.S... God I love that humour. Actually was very funny. |
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| ▲ | asimovDev 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| if you ever remember that engineer's name you should tell them that I found the joke funny |
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| ▲ | ctenb 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Why do you count it as a highlight if your product failed to meet expectations? |
