What could be simpler than building a door desk?  Simple, elegant, cheap – it is an icon of the Seattle startup scene.  I will go so far as to say it is one of the five coolest things to come out of Amazon (the Kindle, 1 Click, the Bezos vs Clubber Lang commercial, and Mark Eamer round out that list for me).  So, while the door desk is many things, it is not is a complicated construction project.  Which brings us to the observation at hand: shoddy inputs waste time and money.

At first glance, the $3.00 box of wood screws from Home Depot seems completely adequate, affordable, and pretty much like the only choice.  After all, we just need to attach 8 brackets to a few 4 x 4’s and a hollow core door.

After stripping a few screws while driving them into the the 4×4, we slow down and take the time to pre-drilling holes.  Doesn’t matter.  Even with a pilot holes we are eating up screws like a fat kid eating cake.  After much consternation, we decide that we need to go get some better screws.  Fast forward 15 minutes.  New screws and no problems.

The moral of this story is that what seemed like the least important element of the project – was the only component which failed us.

Of course, we see the technical equivalent of this all the time, especially when it comes to front end development.  “HTML, javascript, CSS – our devs should be able to bang that out no problem.”  Famous last words.  It is only later that people come to realize that not only are they not getting the result that they want, it is costing them time, and frustrating their team.  Eventually, everyone figures out that it is always worth investing in the right tool for the job.