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I'm surprised that few seem to understand that Zuckerberg chose a motto with a deeper meaning than 'breaking products and code'. He meant break the systems, ca

I'm surprised that few seem to understand that Zuckerberg chose a motto with a deeper meaning than 'breaking products and code'. He meant break the systems, calcified behaviors, and system-think that ends up killing a company over the long term. Move fast, and don't go in predictable directions based on existing corporate momentum. The only way to disrupt yourself is to 'break things' i.e. architectures, regular income, etc that may be holding you back from a better opportunity.

hawkice 12y ago
This is some deeply Talmudic reading of a fairly straight-forward description of engineering deploy cycles. But why stop after just putting those words in his mouth, when he could be retroactively understood to mean so much more! Move fast! Run to all meetings! Take typing lessons so you move faster while coding! Break things! Break your laptop to get a faster one from the company! Move your laptop fast at the hard surface to break it faster and while moving faster! Some may say, if you keep running around with your laptop, you might actually break it. I call that synergy.
jzwinck 12y ago
I agree. From the article: > I can take a pretty obvious guess as of the external manifestations of their new motto: it means they break fewer APIs on their platform. I found this absurd. The idea that "move fast and break things" referred to a reduced level of API compatibility seems much too narrow. Yes, it's understood as a license to break parts of the site in the interest of advancing the product. Facebook did much more than that: it broke/disrupted/redefined our social fabric, the way we understand each other. Along the way it broke promises, expectations, trust, fears, introversion, and boundaries. And it did this very, very quickly--ten years of Facebook and we are all different. Imagine if the Manhattan Project used the same slogan. It's good for some, bad for others, but developed quickly, taken to market, and damn the consequences we're going to figure out what this thing can do.

hawkice 12y ago

This is some deeply Talmudic reading of a fairly straight-forward description of engineering deploy cycles. But why stop after just putting those words in his mouth, when he could be retroactively understood to mean so much more! Move fast! Run to all meetings! Take typing lessons so you move faster while coding! Break things! Break your laptop to get a faster one from the company! Move your laptop fast at the hard surface to break it faster and while moving faster! Some may say, if you keep running around with your laptop, you might actually break it. I call that synergy.

jzwinck 12y ago

I agree. From the article: > I can take a pretty obvious guess as of the external manifestations of their new motto: it means they break fewer APIs on their platform. I found this absurd. The idea that "move fast and break things" referred to a reduced level of API compatibility seems much too narrow. Yes, it's understood as a license to break parts of the site in the interest of advancing the product. Facebook did much more than that: it broke/disrupted/redefined our social fabric, the way we understand each other. Along the way it broke promises, expectations, trust, fears, introversion, and boundaries. And it did this very, very quickly--ten years of Facebook and we are all different. Imagine if the Manhattan Project used the same slogan. It's good for some, bad for others, but developed quickly, taken to market, and damn the consequences we're going to figure out what this thing can do.