this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Even Linus is conflating "doing more" with "being more productive". A car factory could, if they wanted, pump 10x more cars out the door. But qualiry would decrease these would be full of defects, so in the end you weren't more productive
I don't care if there's more PRs. It's just and illusion of productivity
Productivity = Doing more things Efficiency = Doing the right things
I wrote a whole thesis on the subject AMA
Depends on what your metric for "production" is. If you're producing more cars that have to all be recalled and fixed, you're not making more money than you would had you made higher quality cars from the start, and you then also lose face and your brand is viewed as inferior, so sales drop, and the spiral goes brr.
I understand what you're trying to say, and even agree with it, but the car factory example is just wrong. Those have a design speed that is generally limited by cycle times for individual steps. Like a robot has to place say 10 spot welds. You can't speed that up. To stick with this example: in theory you could add a robot so both place 5 spots, but that rework takes probably a year and costs millions. Plus you don't have one bottleneck like this, but a lot of them with similar speed (hence the "design speed" of the whole factory).
You can slow the whole factory down to run under capacity (or not run it during night shift), and then you have room to speed it up. But if you're running at capacity, there is very little you can do.
It's physically impossible to speed up the factory to 1.5x, let alone 10x.
Most of these robots are purposely slowed down for human safety and other factors. So I do believe you can speed up a factory a lot, perhaps not10x, but still.
You can just skip a few welds, don't measure lubricant exactly but do it quickly ±20%, or don't bother smoothly apply sealant. Reduce time to let paint dry. Don't bother with exact alignment. Sure, the car might rattle, rust, break in a small accident and the engine doesn't last long but you're cranking them out fast.