Ask HN: What's the equivalent to a 3 Michelin starred restaurant in tech?
I've been watching "Chef's table" recently and I was so impressed by the level of expertise that the chefs have. Even more impressive is the team spirit, attention to detail, desire to never stop innovating, pursuit for perfection. It feels like working in such a restaurant is an amazing and enriching experience.
I'm wondering if there is an equivalent in the tech world - if there are companies that work like this, and if so, are they more successful than other companies?
23 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 66.4 ms ] threadI would see https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/ as the tech equivalent award currently.
This pretty much universally describes the work environment for kitchen staff in any mid to high end restaurant I know of.
Are there companies that take quality, perfectionism, innovation, workmanship to that level in the tech industry? And do they succeed more than other companies?
I'm sure this happens at lower end places too, but given the enormously high prices I expected they would look after their staff better.
Chefs and the general staff expect higher pay, the restaurant needs to be in a high rent area, you need to make a very specialized meal, and you don't have the customer turn over that you have at a fast food place. Plus their's a limit as to how much you can charge. How many people can afford a $200-$300 meal? Not many... So taking care of the staff in terms of sick time is probably easier at a fast food shop.
The pressure was high, the pay was low and you are constantly being told how to do your job. If you don't agree think about how you act when you're hungry.
The workers have to deal with people that are waiting for their meal. 99% good is a failure because there will always be someone that gets upset because their meal was wrong in some way. It has to be perfect and needs to be done in a timely manner. An to top it all, people get upset because it's too expensive.
When I compare those days to my IT career. IT is easy and I'm happy I never have to work a kitchen again.
I would say, from what I've heard, Amazon would take the 3 Michelin stars.
Hint: The proof is in the pudding. But you have to sit through the whole meal to know whether you enjoyed it...
Can't a product company have these characteristics?
Managers would read papers about the CMM and declare that they wanted to be a Level 5 organization, causing insane amounts of busywork and document generation and overall grief to realize that their underlying business processes were hopelessly in the way of any positive change.
So then the goal went from "Level 5 or Bust!" to "Okay, let's try to get to 3" and then later "Um, can we make Level 2?" Then everyone just gave up. There were only a handful of shops that ever made 5 and stayed there, the Space Shuttle engineers being the most famous example[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model
[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
What's the equivalent of that?
It may seem "amazing and enriching" from the outside, and sous-chefs that work in these establishments surely have a resume that will open doors around the world, but to think it's a fun or entertaining experience is an incorrect assessment.
Here's some reading to get you started:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/top-chefs-michelin...
It may produce high-quality output, but you won't enjoy doing it!
And I do know that there's the well-known "French Michelin" phenomenon - a star in France means much less than a star elsewhere. There are, by repute, three-star Parisian restaurants that would be struggling to get two stars elsewhere in the world.
On the other hand, there are games like BioShock Infinite which get widespread critic appraisal, while the game is obviously just a repetitive shooter with corridors and an obvious lack of any freedom. Sure, it has a storyline (whether you like it or not is a different topic) but a game should be rated primarily for how good it is in its interactive medium, not its novelization. I picked on Bioshock Infinite but it's certainly not limited to that one.
In design, Apple's core hardware design team is over the top psychotic about the quality of their work. It's a true obsession for them. Many font foundries have similar neuroticism driving their work.
I think Chef's Table (great show!) does us all a disservice by kind of skipping over how unbelievably grueling such an undertaking is. It truly is inhuman. It's unfathomably difficult to create merely a successful restaurant... it takes a perfect storm — in both the positive and negative sense — for someone to create something like a Michelin starred restaurant.
So yes, probably. Is it sexy? Certainly not. It looks insane more than anything outside of the lens of a beautifully crafted documentary.
Their products were regarded as things that "Just work" their website was very easy to use for support and information, and these were consistent over a long period of time.
I'm not so sure about the Apple today, but in the 2000s they were certainly were hitting their marks.