Evan is hilarious, check out all the copy on http://phabricator.org/ for an example. However he should probably have been described as ex-Facebook, he left quite a while ago.
His flavor text is also a great read:
Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "break fast and move things" mantra isn't black and white, nor is it universal. It is a general alignment that, at the high level says, don't be afraid to make calculated mistakes but be prepared to quickly respond to feedback and those mistakes as appropriate. That means a privacy or a security issue will be tackled with the utmost urgency--we would even shut down the site if we didn't have a quick fix for a sec…
Yes, you are not misunderstood, there is no need to clarify/interpret this slogan for us. The OP is saying that some mistakes are irreversible. Say, for example, a buggy privacy feature which -- because of fast and loose implementation -- allows users to see previously very private nude pics of a celebrity which he/she had only sent to their partner. Even if it took only 30 seconds to find the error and the entire si…
I feel that this kind of criticism is out of place, since Facebook has been working this way (successfully) for almost a decade without anything like that happening on a great scale.
Yes, mistakes can happen and they do happen everywhere, but Facebooks standards seem quite reasonable to me and they must be, since such mistakes would not be tolerated by its users.
Anyways, I doubt that Facebook ever encouraged its users to upload nude pictures. Whoever does this must be out of his/her mind.
Re: Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course I wasn't talking about banks and space shuttles, that would be inane. Some places can't accept outages and failure, and naturally "move fast and break things" is an unacceptable mantra for those places. However, few companies are rated on the quality of their code. Rather, most companies are rated on how well they serve their customers needs, including the vast majority of companies discussed on Hacker News…
Is it still suitable to code loosely when people use your trivial SaaS as if it were a vital component of their life? And if you encourage people to do so, isn't it irresponsible to keep applying such a methodology?
I think you're missing my point. It's not coding loosely, it's optimizing moving quickly. And by moving quickly you can actually have a safer and more secure site than by, say, only releasing code every 3 months or something.
Re: Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it still suitable to code loosely when people use your trivial SaaS as if it were a vital component of their life? And if you encourage people to do so, isn't it irresponsible to keep applying such a methodology?
I think you're missing my point. It's not coding loosely, it's optimizing moving quickly. And by moving quickly you can actually have a safer and more secure site than by, say, only releasing code every 3 months or something.
This confuses the act of shipping code frequently with what the code actually does. Both of those are important but don't really have any bearing on each other.
fwiw, I disagree strongly that moving fast and breaking things "might be the singularly most important software engineering mantra of our age." Frankly, this terrifies me. You already qualify it by carving out banks, space shuttles (and presumably medical devices, transportation, etc). I suspect we could discuss a list of things where it doesn't quite apply and in the end I would have to add "...for products that aren't critical to your users." to the end of your sentence.
Re: Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're missing my point. It's not coding loosely, it's optimizing moving quickly. And by moving quickly you can actually have a safer and more secure site than by, say, only releasing code every 3 months or something.
This confuses the act of shipping code frequently with what the code actually does . Both of those are important but don't really have any bearing on each other. fwiw, I disagree strongly that moving fast and breaking things "might be the singularly most important software engineering mantra of our age." Frankly, this terrifies me. You already qualify it by carving out banks, space shuttles (and presumably medical de…
"Move fast and break things" is about moving fast, and only mentions "break things" to indicate that its OK to break things. I agree that what the code does is orthogonal.
I would carve out space shuttles, etc, as different, but they already are carved out: they use special subsets of C with no memory allocation, run extensive static analysis and proof software, because those things literally cannot go wrong.
Anything that doesn't use that sort of thing has already committed to the idea that it won't be foolproof. If you code in a scripting language, you are already writing software which you implicitly acknowledge can go wrong. Software has bugs!
Re: Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
This confuses the act of shipping code frequently with what the code actually does . Both of those are important but don't really have any bearing on each other. fwiw, I disagree strongly that moving fast and breaking things "might be the singularly most important software engineering mantra of our age." Frankly, this terrifies me. You already qualify it by carving out banks, space shuttles (and presumably medical de…
"Move fast and break things" is about moving fast, and only mentions "break things" to indicate that its OK to break things. I agree that what the code does is orthogonal. I would carve out space shuttles, etc, as different, but they already are carved out: they use special subsets of C with no memory allocation, run extensive static analysis and proof software, because those things literally cannot go wrong. Anythin…
I guess my issue is specifically with 'break things' as it overgeneralises the idea of experimentation (which is something I do agree with). The impression that 'move fast, break things' leaves me with is that it's ok to break anything and that it's also (implicitly) not a big deal if they stay broken or somehow hurt a user (e.g by exposing, even temporarily, what was once private).
Even though it's a wonderfully pithy 4 words, people can interpret them in many different ways, most of which I'd argue are not good for the end-user.
"... you are already writing software which you implicitly acknowledge can go wrong. Software has bugs!"
Agreed, but shouldn't the intent be to create things in a way that tries to reduce the likelihood of damage while still allowing plenty of room for experimentation? i.e take some care that what you're about to do/push isn't going to do harm? If I follow the 'break things' mantra, I don't need to care. That's what bothers me. It's so easy to hide behind when something goes wrong.
Re: Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Move fast and break things" is about moving fast, and only mentions "break things" to indicate that its OK to break things. I agree that what the code does is orthogonal. I would carve out space shuttles, etc, as different, but they already are carved out: they use special subsets of C with no memory allocation, run extensive static analysis and proof software, because those things literally cannot go wrong. Anythin…
I guess my issue is specifically with 'break things' as it overgeneralises the idea of experimentation (which is something I do agree with). The impression that 'move fast, break things' leaves me with is that it's ok to break anything and that it's also (implicitly) not a big deal if they stay broken or somehow hurt a user (e.g by exposing, even temporarily, what was once private). Even though it's a wonderfully pit…
From what I've learnt of Facebook's attitude, it's more that you won't be fired if you take the site down (at least, the first time). I don't believe that they don't care when you break things, and that wasn't what I was advocating.