MapReduce Explained Using the Ten Hundred Words People Use Most Often MapReduce is a good way to take a big job that would take a long time on one computer and break it up into smaller jobs that can be done by simple computers. If you can break down a big job into smaller jobs, you can run the smaller jobs on many simple computers. If you have a lot of simple computers, you can do a lot of the smaller jobs at the same time, and this can make your job go a lot faster.