I think the big issue with companies like Facebook is not that their development model moves too quickly for them to be able to react to their issues but that they simply don’t care. Facebook has known about the issues with privacy, hyper targeted advertising etc for years. You don’t need to move very fast to react to a fundamental issue in that timeframe.
Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
11–20 of 124 posts
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#12I think the big issue with companies like Facebook is not that their development model moves too quickly for them to be able to react to their issues but that they simply don’t care. Facebook has known about the issues with privacy, hyper targeted advertising etc for years. You don’t need to move very fast to react to a fundamental issue in that timeframe.
Areas where big companies don't care are often ripe for new disruptive products. Google's success can largely be attributed to building a feature that the 400 pound gorilla of the time (yahoo) didn't give a fuck about.
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#13My answer would be: as the things are so broken, that I sometimes wonder how anything still works. Flawed cpus, memory, motherboards, operating systems, hardware, not to even go into userspace/web software full of lasigna frameworks that are buggy as hell even on then own and once you put all that into gulash called modern software... Its a small miracle on its own.
On the plus side, there wouldn't be nearly as much work for us developers if everything just "worked".
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#14Please, someone tell the geniuses at Harvard business that no one ever used "Move Fast, break things" for chips. Having been in the industry long enough, I've seen plenty a launch date moved, and chip-respins executed in favor of risking a recall of hardware from the field.
It's only non-critical, consumer/casual software/applications that can afford to move fast, and break things. Your bank, or medical records, or even traffic light controls simply cannot move fast and break
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#15Sadly the author doesn't understand what iterating quickly means. It's not a means of achieving greater performance in a known area, but a means of finding something that works in an unknown space. So the completely opposite argumentation would've worked. For the last 10+ years we spent iterating over several startups to find how to use this new technology of mobile and internet, and now that we have found most reaso…
I agree. If anything, tinkering and iterating is the best approach to deal with complexity, which the author says will emerge from the new technology.
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#16TFA has lots of 'ideal world' assumptions that are a real hostage to fortune, e.g.
> This new era, on the other hand, will be one of mass collaboration in which government partners with academia and industry to explore new technologies in the pre-competitive phase
. ...
> That’s why we can expect the basis of competition to shift away from design sprints, iterating, and pivoting to building meaningful relationships in order to solve grand challenges. Power in this new era will not sit at the top of industrial hierarchies, but will emanate from the center of networks and ecosystems
Not sure if the FAANG-likes will see it like that.
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#17Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#18Did it ever work?
It worked for the 5% survivors.
If you have a 5% chance of becoming a billionaire and a 95% chance of walking away from a failed startup with minor debts and lost time, the math says that your expected value for moving fast and breaking things is still quite high.
Of course, if you step outside yourself and also consider the downsides of failure for your employees, your investors, your customers, and the harm that a fast-and-loose approach could do for the public at large, or the environment, (or other externalities, depending on your business) it starts to get less attractive.
Being a sociopath who is "only looking out for #1" is a big advantage in business!
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#19My answer would be: as the things are so broken, that I sometimes wonder how anything still works. Flawed cpus, memory, motherboards, operating systems, hardware, not to even go into userspace/web software full of lasigna frameworks that are buggy as hell even on then own and once you put all that into gulash called modern software... Its a small miracle on its own.
the saving grace is probably the fact that our hardware is pretty well designed and so are the core components of our operating systems
Not just well designed, but many core components have been iterated on for decades at this point.
Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore
#20Please, someone tell the geniuses at Harvard business that no one ever used "Move Fast, break things" for chips. Having been in the industry long enough, I've seen plenty a launch date moved, and chip-respins executed in favor of risking a recall of hardware from the field. It's only non-critical, consumer/casual software/applications that can afford to move fast, and break things. Your bank, or medical records, or e…
They probably did though. Except the ones who survived didn’t? :)