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

michaelochurch.wordpress.com

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

#11

Post by michaelochurch »

hluska wrote: post #9
michaelochurch wrote: post #2

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…

I think I'm going to tighten it up later today.

As for phrases like "little sociopath", I want to call people to action on this sort of thing. I want people I've never met to call out and halt their own little sociopaths.

I call out Google because it was once a great company, and billions of dollars of value within in it has been destroyed by careerist middle managers who had no right to do so. I feel like Google is symbolic, because it was such a great company for so long. How on earth did a company go from being a cultural leader (in workplace progressivism) to using Jack Welch-style rank-and-yank in a couple of years?

Journalistic neutrality, on this sort of issue, either veers toward meaningless abstraction ("one model is...") or conservative fact-based concretion. I want to present the facts, but I also want to present, accurately, the more intangible (but no less real) ether of injustice between them.

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

#12

Post by rhizome »

michaelochurch wrote: post #6
andywood wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A classic technique is to allow someone else to read the essay before publishing it.

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

#13

Post by furyofantares »

michaelochurch wrote: post #7
paulsutter wrote: post #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).

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.

What behaviors, exactly? Do you have examples? My apologies if this info is in the second half of the post, I started skimming about halfway through.

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

#14

Post by rhizome »

michaelochurch wrote: post #11
hluska wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think I'm going to tighten it up later today. As for phrases like "little sociopath", I want to call people to action on this sort of thing. I want people I've never met to call out and halt their own little sociopaths. I call out Google because it was once a great company, and billions of dollars of value within in it has been destroyed by careerist middle managers who had no right to do so. I feel like Google is…

As for phrases like "little sociopath", I want to call people to action on this sort of thing. I want people I've never met to call out and halt their own little sociopaths.

Don't try to be manipulative, just lay out your case; neutrality doesn't have to be the goal, but readability would be a plus. One easy place to start is by removing all sentences that include the pronoun "I".

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

#15

Post by michaelochurch »

furyofantares wrote: post #13
michaelochurch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What behaviors, exactly? Do you have examples? My apologies if this info is in the second half of the post, I started skimming about halfway through.

No need to apologize. Post was long. Actually, the best list of examples is in another post: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/an-ethical-cr...

Snippet:

Here’s some shit I’ve either seen, or been credibly informed of, in the past 24 months, most of which was never in the news: no-poach agreements, attempted blacklisting of whistleblowers, a rescinded job offer based on a rumor that suggested PTSD, abuse of process within large companies, extortion of ex-employees, gross breaches of contract, frivolous lawsuits, threats of frivolous lawsuits, price fixing among venture capitalists, bait-and-switch hiring tactics, retaliatory termination, and fraudulent, no-product startups designed to embezzle angel investors.

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

#16

Post by michaelochurch »

rhizome wrote: post #12
michaelochurch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A classic technique is to allow someone else to read the essay before publishing it.

I agree with you. Usually I put 1-2 months before writing a blog post/essay and posting it. I just see this matter as a bit more urgent, as I really want to see the American Spring (the 2012 campaign of people calling out unethical behaviors at companies, rather than protecting scummy ex-employers) happen.

Words-of-prose can be like lines-of-code: beyond about 500, it takes a long process of review not to have some degree of mess.

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

#17

Post by DavidAdams »

michaelochurch wrote: post #6
andywood wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't be so hard on this essay. It's a little scattered, but there's some gold in there. Writing a concise, powerful essay is really, really hard, which is one of the reasons that people who are really good at it become famous (Jonathan Swift, Christopher Hitchens, etc).

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

#18

Post by jroseattle »

I agree with the general principle, which I've summed up as: "fail fast" is often a cocktail-party excuse for reckless approaches to management.

To the OP: I'm relatively an echo chamber for the other comments here. The article qualifies as tl;dr; and would be much more effective with editing. However, I disagree with others that you go the journalism route; it's a blog, and journalism's standards of "we report, you decide" is about facts, not passion. That will turn some people off, but it won't be ambiguous about your intentions.

Keep at it.

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

#20

Post by demian »

In an enviroment where people hate failure, the slogan "fail fast" can help to "tip de balance" to a more iterative and feedback-oriented kind of managment. BUT, when the balance has basically reached the other end, the "slogan" looses it's purpose (because people start failing "too much").
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