The Other Half of "Artists Ship"

November 2008 One of the differences between big companies and startups is that big companies tend to have developed procedures to protect themselves against mistakes.

2008 年 11 月 大公司和初创公司之间的区别之一是，大公司往往会制定程序来保护自己免受错误的影响。

A startup walks like a toddler, bashing into things and falling over all the time.

一家初创公司走路就像一个蹒跚学步的孩子，总是撞到东西并摔倒。

A big company is more deliberate.

大公司更刻意。

The gradual accumulation of checks in an organization is a kind of learning, based on disasters that have happened to it or others

组织中检查的逐渐积累是一种学习，基于它或其他人所发生的灾难

like it.

喜欢它。

After giving a contract to a supplier who goes bankrupt and fails to deliver, for example, a company might require all suppliers to prove they're solvent before submitting bids.

例如，在向破产且未能交货的供应商签订合同后，公司可能会要求所有供应商在提交投标之前证明他们有偿付能力。

As companies grow they invariably get more such checks, either in response to disasters they've suffered, or (probably more often) by hiring people from bigger companies who bring with them customs for protecting against new types of disasters.

随着公司的发展，他们总是会得到更多这样的检查，要么是为了应对他们所遭受的灾难，要么是（可能更常见）从大公司雇用人员，这些人带来了海关以防范新型灾难。

It's natural for organizations to learn from mistakes.

组织从错误中学习是很自然的事情。

The problem is, people who propose new checks almost never consider that the check itself has a cost.

问题是，提出新支票的人几乎从未考虑过支票本身是有成本的。

Every check has a cost.

每张支票都有成本。

For example, consider the case of making suppliers verify their solvency.

例如，考虑让供应商验证其偿付能力的情况。

Surely that's mere prudence?

这肯定只是出于谨慎吧？

But in fact it could have substantial costs.

但事实上，这可能会带来巨大的成本。

There's obviously the direct cost in time of the people on both sides who supply and check

显然，双方供应和检查人员的时间都有直接成本

proofs of the supplier's solvency.

供应商偿付能力的证明。

But the real costs are the ones you never hear about: the company that would be the best supplier, but doesn't bid because they can't spare the effort to get verified.

但真正的成本是你从未听说过的：公司本来是最好的供应商，但没有投标，因为他们不遗余力地进行验证。

Or the company that would be the best supplier, but falls just short of the threshold for solvency—which will of course have been set on the high side, since there is no apparent cost of increasing it.

或者是一家将成为最佳供应商的公司，但仅低于偿付能力的门槛——偿付能力的门槛当然会偏高，因为增加偿付能力没有明显的成本。

Whenever someone in an organization proposes to add a new check, they should have to explain not just the benefit but the cost.

每当组织中有人提议添加新支票时，他们不仅应该解释好处，还应该解释成本。

No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this meta-check would at least remind everyone there had to be a cost, and send them looking for it.

不管他们的分析工作有多糟糕，这种元检查至少会提醒每个人都必须付出代价，并让他们去寻找它。

If companies started doing that, they'd find some surprises.

如果公司开始这样做，他们会发现一些惊喜。

Joel Spolsky recently spoke at Y Combinator about selling software to

Joel Spolsky 最近在 Y Combinator 上发表了有关向

corporate customers.

企业客户。

He said that in most companies software costing up to about $1000 could be bought by individual managers without any additional approvals.

他表示，在大多数公司中，个别经理可以购买成本高达 1000 美元左右的软件，而无需任何额外的批准。

Above that threshold, software purchases generally had to be approved by a committee.

超过该阈值，软件购买通常必须得到委员会的批准。

But babysitting this process was so expensive for software vendors that it didn't make sense to charge less than $50,000.

但对于软件供应商来说，照顾这个过程的成本是如此之高，以至于收费低于 50,000 美元是没有意义的。

Which means if you're making something you might otherwise have charged $5000 for, you have to

这意味着如果你正在制作一些本来可能要花费 5000 美元的东西，你必须

sell it for $50,000 instead.

以 50,000 美元的价格出售。

The purpose of the committee is presumably to ensure that the company doesn't waste money.

该委员会的目的大概是确保公司不浪费金钱。

And yet the result is that the company pays 10 times as much.

但结果是公司支付的费用是原来的 10 倍。

Checks on purchases will always be expensive, because the harder it is to sell something to you, the more it has to cost.

购买支票总是很昂贵，因为卖东西给你越困难，成本就越高。

And not merely linearly, either.

而且也不仅仅是线性的。

If you're hard enough to sell to, the people who are best at making things don't want to bother.

如果你很难推销给你，那些最擅长制造产品的人就不会愿意打扰你。

The

的

only people who will sell to you are companies that specialize in selling to you.

只有专门向您销售产品的公司才会向您销售产品。

Then you've sunk to a whole new level of inefficiency.

然后你的效率就会下降到一个全新的水平。

Market mechanisms no longer protect you, because the good suppliers are no longer in the market.

市场机制不再保护你，因为市场上不再有好的供应商。

Such things happen constantly to the biggest organizations of all, governments.

这样的事情经常发生在最大的组织——政府身上。

But checks instituted by governments can cause much worse problems than merely overpaying.

但政府设立的检查可能会导致比仅仅支付过高更严重的问题。

Checks instituted by

支票由

governments can cripple a country's whole economy.

政府可以削弱一个国家的整个经济。

Up till about 1400, China was richer and more technologically advanced than Europe.

直到大约1400年，中国比欧洲更加富裕，技术也更加先进。

One reason Europe pulled ahead was that the Chinese government restricted long trading voyages.

欧洲领先的原因之一是中国政府限制长途贸易航行。

So it was left to the Europeans to explore and eventually to dominate the rest of the world, including China.

所以就留给欧洲人去探索并最终主宰包括中国在内的世界其他地区。

In more recent times, Sarbanes-Oxley has practically destroyed the

最近，《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》实际上摧毁了

US IPO market.

美国IPO市场。

That wasn't the intention of the legislators who wrote it.

这并不是立法者撰写该法案的意图。

They just wanted to add a few more checks on public companies.

他们只是想对上市公司增加一些检查。

But they forgot to consider the cost.

但他们忘记了考虑成本。

They forgot that companies about to go public are usually rather stretched, and that the weight of a few extra checks that might be easy for General Electric to bear are enough to prevent younger companies from being public at all.

他们忘记了，即将上市的公司通常都相当捉襟见肘，而通用电气可能很容易承受的一些额外检查的重量足以阻止年轻的公司上市。

Once you start to think about the cost of checks, you can start to ask other interesting questions.

一旦您开始考虑支票的成本，您就可以开始提出其他有趣的问题。

Is the cost increasing or decreasing?

成本是增加还是减少？

Is it higher in some areas than others?

某些领域是否比其他领域更高？

Where does it increase discontinuously?

哪里不连续增加？

If large organizations started to ask questions like that, they'd learn some frightening things.

如果大型组织开始提出这样的问题，他们会学到一些可怕的事情。

I think the cost of checks may actually be increasing.

我认为检查成本实际上可能会增加。

The reason is that software plays an increasingly important role in companies,

原因是软件在企业中扮演着越来越重要的角色，

and the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks.

编写软件的人尤其容易受到支票的伤害。

Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best ones actually prefer to work hard.

程序员与许多类型的工人不同，因为最优秀的程序员实际上更喜欢努力工作。

This doesn't seem to be the case in most types of work.

在大多数类型的工作中，情况似乎并非如此。

When I worked in fast food, we didn't prefer the busy times.

当我在快餐店工作时，我们不喜欢忙碌的时光。

And when I used to mow lawns, I definitely didn't prefer it when the grass was long after a week of rain.

当我以前修剪草坪时，我绝对不喜欢在一周的雨后草长得很长的时候。

Programmers, though, like it better when they write more code.

然而，程序员更喜欢编写更多代码。

Or

或者

more precisely, when they release more code.

更准确地说，当他们发布更多代码时。

Programmers like to make a difference.

程序员喜欢做出改变。

Good ones, anyway.

无论如何，都是好的。

For good programmers, one of the best things about working for a startup is that there are few checks on releases.

对于优秀的程序员来说，在初创公司工作的最好的事情之一就是对版本的检查很少。

In true startups, there are no external checks at all.

在真正的初创公司中，根本没有外部检查。

If you have an idea for a new feature in the morning, you can write it and push it to the production servers before lunch.

如果您早上有一个新功能的想法，您可以在午餐前将其编写并推送到生产服务器。

And when you can do that, you have more

当你能做到这一点时，你就会拥有更多

ideas.

想法。

At big companies, software has to go through various approvals before it can be launched.

在大公司，软件在发布之前必须经过各种审批。

And the cost of doing this can be enormous—in fact, discontinuous.

这样做的成本可能是巨大的——事实上，是不连续的。

I was talking recently to a group of three programmers whose startup had been acquired a few years before by a big company.

我最近与一群三名程序员交谈，他们的初创公司几年前被一家大公司收购了。

When they'd been independent, they could release changes instantly.

当他们独立后，他们可以立即发布更改。

Now, they said, the absolute fastest they could get code released on the production servers was

他们说，现在，他们在生产服务器上发布代码的绝对最快速度是

two weeks.

两周。

This didn't merely make them less productive.

这不仅降低了他们的生产力。

It made them hate working for the acquirer.

这让他们讨厌为收购方工作。

Here's a sign of how much programmers like to be able to work hard: these guys would have paid to be able to release code immediately, the way they used to.

这是程序员多么希望能够努力工作的一个迹象：这些人愿意付出代价，以便能够像以前那样立即发布代码。

I asked them if they'd trade 10% of the acquisition price for the ability to release code immediately, and all three instantly said yes.

我问他们是否愿意用收购价格的 10% 来换取立即发布代码的能力，三人立即表示愿意。

Then I asked what was the maximum

然后我问最大是多少

percentage of the acquisition price they'd trade for it.

他们为其交易的收购价格的百分比。

They said they didn't want to think about it, because they didn't want to know how high they'd go, but I got the impression it might be as much as half.

他们说他们不想考虑这个问题，因为他们不想知道自己会升到多高，但我的印象是可能有一半。

They'd have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, just to be able to deliver more software to users.

他们会牺牲数十万美元，甚至数百万美元，只是为了能够向用户提供更多软件。

And you know what?

你知道吗？

It would have been perfectly safe to let them.

让他们这么做是绝对安全的。

In

在

fact, the acquirer would have been better off; not only wouldn't these guys have broken anything, they'd have gotten a lot more done.

事实上，收购方的境况本来会更好；这些人不仅不会破坏任何东西，而且还能完成更多的事情。

So the acquirer is in fact getting worse performance at greater cost.

因此，收购方实际上以更大的成本获得了更差的业绩。

Just like the committee approving software purchases.

就像批准软件采购的委员会一样。

And just as the greatest danger of being hard to sell to is not that you overpay but that the best suppliers won't even sell to you, the greatest danger of applying too many checks to your

正如难以销售的最大危险不是您支付过高的价格，而是最好的供应商甚至不会向您出售产品一样，对您的产品进行过多检查的最大危险是

programmers is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for you.

对程序员来说，并不是你会让他们变得生产力低下，而是优秀的程序员甚至不会愿意为你工作。

Steve Jobs's famous maxim "artists ship" works both ways.

史蒂夫·乔布斯的著名格言“艺术家之船”是双向的。

Artists aren't merely capable of shipping.

艺术家不仅仅有能力运送。

They insist on it.

他们坚持这样做。

So if you don't let people ship, you won't have any artists.

所以如果你不让人们发货，你就不会有任何艺术家。