Wu Jun on Orders of Magnitude

Source and verification limitations (2026-11-02): The post is tagged Wu Jun/Dedao. Matching passages were found only in third-party notes. The original post says “not the same,” whereas the third-party page says “the same.” Without the original course, no determination is made about which version is correct. Claims such as a Retina display costing less than US$10 extra lack a model, year, and teardown basis. The achievement formula is a heuristic, not an empirically established law. Source and reference link (see the scope of verification above): https://www.onekbit.com/ViewBlog/blog/BID20190912100176 ---- #Wu Jun on Orders of Magnitude A good engineer must distinguish the orders of magnitude of the factors in a difficult problem, then know which insignificant items to remove from the to-do list. Inexperienced engineers solve whatever problem arrives first, expending effort for little reward. Achievement = success rate × magnitude of the task × speed of execution When people first enter the workplace, they often start with small tasks because they cannot yet handle large ones. They are also inexperienced and slow. All three factors in the formula are small. With steady effort, however, their success rate rises; as efficiency improves, so does speed. Most people can achieve this. What some people cannot achieve in their careers is an increase in the magnitude of the tasks they undertake. ----- Earlier posts described a young engineer who inadvertently limited his thinking to very small quantities. In engineering, methods for small-scale problems often do not work for large ones. In the sorting problem he was trying to solve, a thousand versus several thousand operations may seem similar when sorting a few dozen numbers. With tens of thousands of numbers, however, the difference becomes hundreds of millions versus millions of operations. The two methods differ by orders of magnitude. This is what outstanding engineers consider first. ---- Start with numerical orders of magnitude: each step represents roughly a tenfold difference, as in units, tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. Orders of magnitude matter in investment and finance. Two companies whose revenues differ by a factor of two or three are different sizes but remain within the same order of magnitude and can compete. If revenues in the same niche differ by more than tenfold, the companies are no longer on the same order of magnitude, making competition very difficult for the smaller one. Magnitude has a precise mathematical definition. As an analogy, think of the differences among a sesame seed, an orange, a watermelon, an elephant, a mountain, Earth, the Sun, and the Milky Way. ---- Outstanding engineers handle different orders of magnitude differently in two ways: 1. When something small and something large appear together, the smaller one must be ignored, as if it did not exist. Most people with 10,000 who are offered another 1 will think that every little bit counts: 10,001 > 10,000, so they should take it. But for a competent engineer, these two numbers are not the same thing; do not add unnecessary complications. Adding a sesame seed to an orange makes no meaningful difference to the orange. Paying attention to the seed may even cause you to lose or damage the orange. 2. Several small things together are far less than one large thing. That is why a dozen or more handfuls of sesame seeds cannot compare with a watermelon. This is important in investing, too. A good engineer focuses on improving methods by orders of magnitude, because the payoff can be hundreds, tens of thousands, or more times greater. An ambitious engineer who has not learned this way of thinking instead squeezes in another hour of work each day, doing repetitive tasks. Remember: 1.1 sesame seeds are still a long way from an orange. A good engineer must distinguish the orders of magnitude of the factors in a difficult problem, then know which insignificant items to remove from the to-do list. Inexperienced people solve whatever arrives first, potentially expending effort for little reward. Product managers making knockoffs constantly try to save a few cents, leaving their products unable to command even half the price of genuine ones. Good product managers understand how a 1% improvement in detail can make quality appear an order of magnitude better. Apple’s so-called Retina display, for example, costs less than US$10 more than an ordinary display, yet can add more than US$100 to a computer’s selling price and more than double the quality of the user’s experience. That is a “sesame seed” of extra cost delivering an “orange” of benefit. ---- Consider Yu Minhong’s founding of New Oriental. Yu was a star teacher. Had he remained simply “Teacher Yu,” however good his classes, he would still have been earning money through hard work alone. His successful transition to “Principal Yu” changed that, producing a breakthrough in magnitude. He transformed his identity completely: rather than constantly focusing on teaching his own classes well, he thought about raising other teachers’ profiles and running the school well. ---- Remember how important magnitude is in engineering, how large the gaps are between different magnitudes, and how those gaps grow the further you go. Always keep this in mind. 2. Change your habits. Investors should not remain absorbed in having written the first check; they should find ways to write the largest one. Teachers should not focus on how many talks they have given, but on how to become good school leaders. Engineers should not keep trying to do 1% more work; they should think about participating in 1% of something more consequential. Product managers should not keep trying to cut costs by 1%; they should ask how to make users willing to pay twice as much for their product. I hope the concept of magnitude brings a different perspective to your thinking. ---- #得到 #吳軍 #矽谷來信谷歌方法論