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"Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

michaelochurch.wordpress.com

1–10 of 35 posts

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#3
I'm sorry, I really did try to read this because it sounded like it might interesting, but it's well over 2.5K words and by about halfway through I still had no idea what it was really about. I skipped down to the final paragraph and that still didn't seem to tell me. May I respectfully suggest that future posts this long have a one-line or at least one-paragraph summary at the top?

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#4
I really like the motivating idea behind this post, and read all the way through for that reason. It has some good points (the 30/60/90 PIP example), but it's hard to remember the key points.

As a fan of the idea, I hope you can spend a little more time to tighten it up and add some more concrete examples (some of the points seemed a little hard for me to picture concretely).

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#5

I'm sorry, I really did try to read this because it sounded like it might interesting, but it's well over 2.5K words and by about halfway through I still had no idea what it was really about. I skipped down to the final paragraph and that still didn't seem to tell me. May I respectfully suggest that future posts this long have a one-line or at least one-paragraph summary at the top?

I think it's more than the lack of a summary. The whole essay could really benefit from a lot more editing and tightening up.

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#6
post #5

I'm sorry, I really did try to read this because it sounded like it might interesting, but it's well over 2.5K words and by about halfway through I still had no idea what it was really about. I skipped down to the final paragraph and that still didn't seem to tell me. May I respectfully suggest that future posts this long have a one-line or at least one-paragraph summary at the top?

I think it's more than the lack of a summary. The whole essay could really benefit from a lot more editing and tightening up.

I agree. I'm outraged and disgusted by things I've seen over the past 12 months-- some have happened to me, most to other people-- and it's really affecting the quality of my writing.

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#7

I really like the motivating idea behind this post, and read all the way through for that reason. It has some good points (the 30/60/90 PIP example), but it's hard to remember the key points. As a fan of the idea, I hope you can spend a little more time to tighten it up and add some more concrete examples (some of the points seemed a little hard for me to picture concretely).

I guess the key point is: a lot of people are using "fail fast" as an excuse for behaviors that previous generations would consider frankly irresponsible, if not unethical, and I think the general element of scumbaggery that we've seen in technology of late is a result of this absurd ideology.

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#8

No idea if I'm taking the most effective approach here, but these ethical discussions are long overdue and I really hope they'll occur.

I think the folks that would benefit most from an improvement in ethics are likely to read this without taking away anything more constructive than new ways to 'position' themselves to folks who aren't sociopaths.

still worth talking about tho. ( and yeah, a bit long for a blog post, but only minutes to read.. some things take more than 140 characters )

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#9

No idea if I'm taking the most effective approach here, but these ethical discussions are long overdue and I really hope they'll occur.

If you strip out some personal bitterness and spent some serious time with a scorched earth editor, this could be a very effective treatise on the state of ethics and corporate responsibility in the technology industry. You touch on some interesting concepts that deserve thought...

Alas, phrases like "snot-nosed kids", "Google's douche-tsunami" and "little sociopath" betray both personal bias and anger. Phrases like these make it too easy to dismiss this article as little more than a rant.

I believe that if you're going to call out an industry on ethics, you have to pursue the article as a journalist would. Keep your personal feelings under wraps, tell the whole story and leave the conclusions to your readers. When it comes to proving a point and convincing people to change, passionate journalism always trumps passion on its own.

Re: "Fail fast" is no excuse for being a moron, flake or scumbag

#10

No idea if I'm taking the most effective approach here, but these ethical discussions are long overdue and I really hope they'll occur.

I think the folks that would benefit most from an improvement in ethics are likely to read this without taking away anything more constructive than new ways to 'position' themselves to folks who aren't sociopaths. still worth talking about tho. ( and yeah, a bit long for a blog post, but only minutes to read.. some things take more than 140 characters )

I'm not writing this for the unethical people. I'm writing it for the marginally good people who are lazing about while the world burns.

I'm a believer in a 10/89/1 model of human morality. (These numbers are approximate.) The Good are 10%. The Bad are 1%. The Weak are 89%. The Good outnumber the Bad and one might expect them to win, but the Bad just as often win because they are willing to go further in their manipulation of the Weak.

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