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I don't know that this is a particularly good article, but it touches on two elements of games based on incomplete / imperfect information.

One of these elements he refers to as "leverage" and I think he does an ok job explaining what it is, although maybe not how / why it works.

The other one, contrasting doctors and contractors, I think he does poorly. Full disclosure: I've had really crappy luck with doctors (it's not just luck). Doctors aren't used to getting "not to exceed" demands, things like that. On the other hand my father was a psychiatrist, a specialist, and that gives me insight into the "practice" of medicine; and I've worked for a number of biotechs and I have some insight into the evolution of medical practice. Combined, I have a pretty good sense of when the doctors are "practicing" versus forming a hypothesis (ask for one!).

During one of my burnouts I took a "vacation" working (what started as part time) for a high-end flooring contractor. Although the owner and I had different backgrounds and beliefs we had mutual respect for each other (and we had great conversations). But what the public calls (and in public we called) an "estimate" we called internally an "interview"; and we wanted to take the temperature of the "pain in the ass" factor: Does the prospect truly understand the work? Does the prospect have irrelevant concerns? (I'm doing a poor job here, although I'm pretty sure successful contractors will understand what I'm talking about.) Our bids could vary as much as 300% (upwards) from our baseline model / estimate for the job... before we said "no" outright or came up with good excuse for them to fire us before receiving our bid.

There were some rather "zen" aspects of the process (my father had a zen question: how do you feel? I have a zen question: what do you measure?), such as an insistence that all special instructions had to fit, legibly handwritten, in about 1/3 of an 8x11 piece of paper. (We did $10000 floors on a one page contract, not including non-negotiable required boilerplate; why can't we do that in IT? Can we? Yes, yes I say we can.)

But distilling this down: some contractors would rather deal with the masssages and fish tank cleaning (at 3x the $$$) than do floors... whereas for us flooring was a religious calling or something. You'll find this both in doctors and in contractors; and you'll also find people out there who expect to pay that 300% markup to have the contractor walk their dog.




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