This is both a very fun letter and a great introduction to how something that is “obvious” to the non-practitioner (“A square ratio can obviously uses less material so is obviously better!”) can be totally wrong.
So the next time you see an article on hacker news where the solution to some problem seems overly complicated, and you want to say, “Why not just do X?” Think about the ratio between height and width of a cat food can and evaluate whether you might be missing something.
Related, this is a great example of why I’m skeptical when an analyst tells me they’ve done a “5 Whys” exercise to identify the root of an issue / optimization problem. The process follows a path to a solution with horse blinders intentionally on. If, in this case, the issue was the high use of steel, an analyst might drill down to the time it takes to retool or switch over a production line as the root cause of needing to use more than the ideal ratio. Clearly, however, the reality is much more complex.
The real trick to root cause analysis is not to find a straight chain of 5 "whys" but to find a tree of whys and examine the leaf nodes. One path from root to tip would resemble a "5 whys" (but potentially be longer or shorter) but stopping when you've found a single item to fix is doing yourself a disservice.
This 1000x. It's particularly interesting if leaf nodes are allowed to continue branching into uncomfortable or organizationally taboo subjects (like culture or leadership problems), and if the same problems appear multiple times as leaf nodes. Then you know you're really getting somewhere.
Definitely guilt of championing (and perhaps even over-leveraging) the 5 why’s myself. What do you think is a structured & repeatable way of drilling down to the kind of layered insights here?
I see a fishbone activity as somewhat the reverse of the five whys. Instead of starting broad and narrowing focus down a singular path, the fishbone takes the problem and looks at all the contributing factors:
Wow this is great. I could see how using this framework could lead you to identify the same factors in the article (assuming you had similar domain knowledge).
I think the next hurdle would be coming up with a solution that sufficiently addresses these root causes.
> So the next time you see an article on hacker news where the solution to some problem seems overly complicated, and you want to say, “Why not just do X?”
I don’t understand your takeaway. This is an example of someone asking the obvious question and getting an interesting answer, which is what happens on HN. It sounds like you’re asking people to withhold asking these questions.
That's not my experience on HN, or with tech folks in general. There will be a long article about some particularly hard thing, be it energy storage, GPS, or cat food can design, and comments will roll in, "simply do X".
If it’s questions and curiosity then that’s wonderful. But I find that it’s more likely to be contempt and simple-minded dismissal borne of cocksure overconfidence, and that’s probably what the OP is thinking of.
In my experience, the question "Why not just do X?" can have 2 intentions and interpretations.
One meaning is "Obviously X is the better solution, and you're dumb for not doing X".
The other meaning is "Naively, X would seem to be a solution, but I assume you have good reasons for not doing X. Could you please elaborate why you didn't do X, so I can learn something?"
I can't speak for other people, but when I ask a question like that, my intention is to learn something. However, many people seem to interpret it in the "you're dumb" way. I've also trained myself to receive that kind of questions in the kindest way possible - i.e. in the "learn something" interpretation. It tends to lead to much more civil conversations and less drama.
Look at it this way : if mr. Pleacher hadn't written the Carnation company "why don't you use a 1:1 ratio?", you and I wouldn't have learned these interesting things about cat food canning.
So my advice : when somebody asks "why don't you just do X", assume they understand you have good reasons, and want to learn.
On the other hand, when asking a question like that, realise most people won't have that interpretation. Make it clear you understand there are probably good reasons, and you'd just like to understand them.
So the next time you see an article on hacker news where the solution to some problem seems overly complicated, and you want to say, “Why not just do X?” Think about the ratio between height and width of a cat food can and evaluate whether you might be missing something.