Penny-Wise and Pound-Stupid - by Adam Ard
One summer, during a programming internship, a fellow intern spilled her drink all over her keyboard. Not water—soda. Sticky, syrupy residue quickly dried between the keys. The keyboard was a lost cause. The keys stuck down when pressed, only popping back up minutes later.
Panicked, she worried her boss would be upset about the ruined company property. Determined to fix it, she took the keyboard apart and began cleaning. After more than an hour of painstaking effort, her boss walked by and asked what she was doing. Embarrassed, she explained.
He laughed and asked: “How much do you make an hour? How long have you been working on this? And do you know how much a keyboard costs?”
Finally, he added, “You’ve spent more time on this than the keyboard is worth. Just toss it and grab a new one from the supply closet. It’s not worth your time.”
In the software industry, we often fall into the same trap: penny-wise and pound-stupid. Like that intern scrubbing a ruined $14 keyboard, we spend time and resources on things that just don’t pay off. If every decision were as clear-cut as the sticky keyboard, this wouldn’t be a problem. But in engineering, costs and benefits are rarely so obvious. Still, I’ve noticed a few situations that feel just like that intern’s frantic keyboard cleanup.
