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0 pointspembrook2mo ago0 comments

The problem with human labor is that, as an organization scales, the amount of work any individual in the system can do shrinks due to the coordination problem.

Coordination consumes a larger and larger amount of employee time to the point that, in the absolute largest organizations, the vast majority of employee time is internal coordination vs. actual improvement/selling of the customer offering.

So if you go from 100 employees to 1,000 employees, they can MAYBE do 4X the work. Not 10X like you'd think. And this effect gets even worse as you scale further.

So if an AI can do 10X more labor in a human day, and can coordinate instantaneously via a central context ledger (say a git repo), it doesn't just create 10X gains in productivity for large orgs. It creates a multiple of that 10X due to also removing the human coordination overhead.

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_pdp_2mo ago

Don't you think AI itself is something that adds coordination overhead? A 1000 strong team with AI agents will feel like 5000-person company where more than 30% are not even at exception level - i.e. they need to be pulled along.

This is why having less people and more agents actually makes sense but the coordination problem remains either way.

And you cannot escape it because it is simply mathematical.

pembrookOP2mo ago

The coordination problem absolutely can be escaped with technology, hence why productivity gains exist and why the economy grows and isn't a fixed pie over time.

Here's an easy non-AI example:

In the past, a 'computer' was literally a person [1]. If you needed to synthesize large amounts of data, you needed to split the task among a team of people writing things down and then a team of people to check their work after the fact and then a team of people to combine all the work and then a team to double-check the combined work.

Tasks that in the past would have taken a room full of people coordinating with pencils are absolutely done by 1 machine today (what we know as computers) that no longer needs to split that task and coordinate, which is exactly what will happen with 'agents' who can take on vastly more work per unit of time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

2 more replies

keeda2mo ago

Yep, I call this the "Conway Overhead": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47270142

wolvoleo1mo ago

This is so true. I can see the same in our organisation. So much time wasted on bullshit busywork and red tape.

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