> Your productivity turns negative when you make so many mistakes that you’re destroying value, not creating it.
One thing to consider about knowledge/skill workers vs unskilled labor is that most complex systems are house of cards style situations where a single mistake can both destroy a network effect of value, but also take several orders of magnitude of time and effort to detect and rectify the actual issue.
Introducing a subtle, but value destroying, bug into a system can do value damage to the N systems it interconnects with, and can lead to a near total loss of the whole system (eg: drop table). Of course there are safeguards that can help avoid this like backups, but still the point is a carpenter wouldn't make the whole house worthless by a misplaced nail.
One thing to consider about knowledge/skill workers vs unskilled labor is that most complex systems are house of cards style situations where a single mistake can both destroy a network effect of value, but also take several orders of magnitude of time and effort to detect and rectify the actual issue.
Introducing a subtle, but value destroying, bug into a system can do value damage to the N systems it interconnects with, and can lead to a near total loss of the whole system (eg: drop table). Of course there are safeguards that can help avoid this like backups, but still the point is a carpenter wouldn't make the whole house worthless by a misplaced nail.