Thirteenth law of worker entropy

Office anthropology™ Go Premium The JC puts on his pith-helmet, grabs his butterfly net and a rucksack full of marmalade sandwiches, and heads into the concrete jungleIndex: Click ᐅ to expand: Work anthropology Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

The JC’s thirteenth law of worker entropy (also known as the “optimal complication theorem”): Over time, a given template will tend to a point of “optimal” complication, (c), which is a function of:

(i) the highest plausibly chargeable fraction of the typical value, (v_f), of contracts concluded on the template,

(ii) the time, (t), required to manipulate the template so it reliably works to the satisfaction of one having the patience, skill and hubris to understand it, and

(iii) the professional charge-out rate, (r), of such an unusually abled person.

The relationship between c, v_f, t and r is as follows: c ↔ v_f = tr.

The JC developed this over a series of papers with sometime collaborator, poet, playwright and tropical disease victim Otto Büchstein when trying to understand how Medium Term Note documentation could be so dreary despite the underlying product being basically simple.

See also

• Laws of worker entropy