Toward a New Theory of Productivity
Standard theory says that productivity is output over input. That's easy enough to grasp, and entirely right. p = o / i Of course, input means a whole lot of different things. A cabinet-maker who puts in 20 hours of labor every day but has no stock of wood or tools would be unproductive. Likewise, a pile of boards and hardware is unproductive without a skilled laborer to fit them together. Output is also multidimensional. It involves quality as well as quantity. An inept carpenter who thoughtlessly half-drove nails into two boards, called the result a cabinet, and shipped it would be productive in quantity terms, shipping dozens and dozens of "cabinets" a day, but his output would be unusable waste. This is all dead obvious until you bring up software. Software is weird. Software doesn't involve any visible raw supplies, has no stockpile of parts, requires a rather small bit of easy physical labor (typing), and produces a product that is mostly inv...