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A CTO of a startup I joined said "we are moving fast and break things". Sounded great! But after the first outage they were looking for someone to blame and qui

A CTO of a startup I joined said "we are moving fast and break things". Sounded great! But after the first outage they were looking for someone to blame and quickly revoking production access)))

christopherwxyz 5y ago
Zuck changed the motto in 2014 to be "Move fast with stable infrastructure." It's obvious that the first mentality was a bit reckless and only optimized growth at all costs. At some point you have to pay for that debt. https://www.wired.com/2014/04/zuckerberg-f8-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2014/04/zuckerberg-f8-interview/
tombert 5y ago
Yeah, I think a lot of managers and executives want the social credit of "we're totally open to experimentation and trying new things!" because that makes them sound cool. I don't think they're "lying" since that requires intent, but I think a lot of the time that's also not a 100% honest sentiment either. They are nominally open to experimentation...so long as you know the experiment is going to work. Not going to say the company name (though you might be able to figure it out based on my post history, I ask that you don't paste it here if you figure it out), but I was working for a bigass megacorporation where management told me upon being hired "we don't play the blame game here, things are going to break". That sounded cool, and about three months later, I committed some "risky" code (which passed the PR review process evidently), and it broke production for about two hours. I then got VoIP call with that same manager who yelled at me telling me that I need to be more careful because this is unacceptable. Presumably this manager was frustrated and just needed someone to blame, so fair enough, but it's not something I ever really forgave if I'm being honest.
- jostmey 5y ago
  Haha! An experiment you know will work is not an experiment!
  - tombert 5y ago
    Yeah, that's my point; it's easy to say you want to "move quick and break shit", people think you're cool as you say it, but it's not really honest. Managers (somewhat understandably) do not want uncertainty, and experimentation (almost by definition) leads to uncertainty.
draw_down 5y ago
Yeah. When you're picking up pennies in front of the steamroller, it's pretty cool before you get to the steamroller part. Look at the pennies!

A CTO of a startup I joined said "we are moving fast and break things". Sounded great! But after the first outage they were looking for someone to blame and quickly revoking production access)))

christopherwxyz 5y ago

Zuck changed the motto in 2014 to be "Move fast with stable infrastructure." It's obvious that the first mentality was a bit reckless and only optimized growth at all costs. At some point you have to pay for that debt. https://www.wired.com/2014/04/zuckerberg-f8-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2014/04/zuckerberg-f8-interview/

tombert 5y ago

Yeah, I think a lot of managers and executives want the social credit of "we're totally open to experimentation and trying new things!" because that makes them sound cool. I don't think they're "lying" since that requires intent, but I think a lot of the time that's also not a 100% honest sentiment either. They are nominally open to experimentation...so long as you know the experiment is going to work. Not going to say the company name (though you might be able to figure it out based on my post history, I ask that you don't paste it here if you figure it out), but I was working for a bigass megacorporation where management told me upon being hired "we don't play the blame game here, things are going to break". That sounded cool, and about three months later, I committed some "risky" code (which passed the PR review process evidently), and it broke production for about two hours. I then got VoIP call with that same manager who yelled at me telling me that I need to be more careful because this is unacceptable. Presumably this manager was frustrated and just needed someone to blame, so fair enough, but it's not something I ever really forgave if I'm being honest.

jostmey 5y ago
Haha! An experiment you know will work is not an experiment!
- tombert 5y ago
  Yeah, that's my point; it's easy to say you want to "move quick and break shit", people think you're cool as you say it, but it's not really honest. Managers (somewhat understandably) do not want uncertainty, and experimentation (almost by definition) leads to uncertainty.

draw_down 5y ago

Yeah. When you're picking up pennies in front of the steamroller, it's pretty cool before you get to the steamroller part. Look at the pennies!