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Pareto Front

198 points · 85 comments · binyu

  1. shermantanktop · · focus · HN ↗
    I’m sadly twitchy when I hear “Pareto” - having endured numerous middle managers suggesting they can deliver 80% of the scope in 20% of the time (unrelated to the frontier topic here). Do that at each level of an org and the nonsense multiples rapidly.

    The 80/20 “rule,” as far as I know, is meant to be descriptive after the fact. It can’t be used as a planning assumption. To be fair to those managers, they don’t really mean to be rigorous. They are just trying to justify cutting scope.

    1. nonameiguess · · focus · HN ↗
      That's the "Pareto Principle" whereas the frontier is talking about Pareto efficiency. They have the same name because both were first developed by the economist Vilfredo Pareto, but they're not actually otherwise related.
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