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The Religion of Speed

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Re: The Religion of Speed

#31

Post by nine_k »

derefr wrote: post #21

The religion of speed is the religion of VC investment backing, because VCs have set time horizons for delivering returns to their own investors. You can only get their interest if you can make them believe you can deliver 10x growth on their schedule . Committing to that schedule — and really believing in that commitment — is what turns someone into the sort of person who sets arbitrary project timelines that disreg…

These timelines are not arbitrary. They are dictated by the cost of money (for the VC). They have little to do with the target market situation, and totally don't care about technical considerations. They only care if your profits, or at least revenue, or at least market share grows fast enough. If it does not, they write off their losses and liquidate the company.

This is the fear that dictates the damned speed™: either you go up insanely fast, or you die. If your goals do not align with this approach, do not take VC money. If you want to develop things without haste, only join a startup with a proven PMF and insanely goos sales team, which takes care of hockey- stick growth so that you can concentrate on quality.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#32

Post by simianwords »

If you don’t go fast you deprive your consumers of your product. It’s not clear why that tradeoff is good?

There was a recent petition signed by all major AI labs to slow down AI development. Would this author or you guys agree it’s a good thing?

Re: The Religion of Speed

#33

Post by yls »

endorphine wrote: post #13

A very relevant book that goes beyond the workplace (but also includes it): Alienation and Acceleration: Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality by Hartmut Rosa

Thank you for the recommendation!

Re: The Religion of Speed

#34

Post by bob1029 »

You can fail a project not because you were technically wrong about anything, but because you burned your customer out by taking 6 months instead of 6 weeks to find a viable solution to their problem. Speed is a feature from the perspective of your customers. There is economic value associated with it.

Consider your state of mind when you call the HVAC tech to fix your broken condensing on an August afternoon in Texas. This is how a lot of business leaders feel every day. Speed is the best way to meet uncertainty in complex domains. Unless you are fairly sure you can one shot the problem with a single commit, having a process to iterate with some expediency is important to success.

There is definitely a point where you are going too fast, but the customer will almost certainly let you know when this happens. Let them decide for you how fast is too fast.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#36

Post by novok »

hateful wrote: post #17

I realized early on that sometimes management thinks that if you don't look stressed than your not taking it seriously enough. Phrases like "I don't feel that you have a sense of urgency" really messed with my head back then.

They tend to be a bit anxious and get anxious that your not anxious. There are many that are not like that

Re: The Religion of Speed

#37

Post by dgellow »

simianwords wrote: post #32

If you don’t go fast you deprive your consumers of your product. It’s not clear why that tradeoff is good? There was a recent petition signed by all major AI labs to slow down AI development. Would this author or you guys agree it’s a good thing?

I would, yes, given how unsustainable the whole AI industry looks like. It would be way, way better if they could figure out their things out before pushing so hard for the whole software world to adopt their experimental tech

Re: The Religion of Speed

#38

Post by derefr »

nine_k wrote: post #31
derefr wrote: post #21

The religion of speed is the religion of VC investment backing, because VCs have set time horizons for delivering returns to their own investors. You can only get their interest if you can make them believe you can deliver 10x growth on their schedule . Committing to that schedule — and really believing in that commitment — is what turns someone into the sort of person who sets arbitrary project timelines that disreg…

These timelines are not arbitrary. They are dictated by the cost of money (for the VC). They have little to do with the target market situation, and totally don't care about technical considerations. They only care if your profits, or at least revenue, or at least market share grows fast enough. If it does not, they write off their losses and liquidate the company. This is the fear that dictates the damned speed™: ei…

I never said the VC's timeline is arbitrary! They're ultimately based in loan interest rates / bond yields / etc — as you say, the "cost of money."

But the timelines that founders and CEOs can end up coming up with for the arbitrary subprojects/efforts they choose to pursue to try to get the company closer to giving those VCs the hockey-stick growth they demand, are much more arbitrary. Mostly in the sense that such subprojects/efforts can often be selected/pursued with no thought to the fact that either the goal is technically impossible within the chosen time budget; or, even if possible, that the effort won't demonstrate results within the chosen time budget, and so will be given up on whether or not it's working (because founders interpret absence of metrics as metrics relaying absence.)

Which is to say: if you can guarantee from before you start that a given subproject or effort will be considered "a failed experiment" — then you'd think it would be obvious that you shouldn't do that one. That you should put it on the backlog of things you can try after PMF + hockey-stick growth, when you have time to evaluate things thoroughly.

But that doesn't seem to be obvious to a lot of founders and CEOs. Many of them spend a lot of their and their employees' time setting off on efforts that everyone in the room basically already knows they'll be cancelling two weeks later, before said effort has had a chance to either succeed or fail on its merits.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#39

Post by stephantul »

thearrow wrote: post #7

Felt this in my bones. It’s painful how accurately this describes my current work situation. The pressure comes from the top - leaders that have no idea what they want but they want _something_ to happen NOW. This has only gotten worse with the recent AI thoughtleadering because now the expectation has been seeded that every random brainwave should take at most one hour to implement (given enough tokens). What can an…

I’m in a similar boat. The one thing that seems to help is recognizing when the ask from leadership is genuine, and also sensible from a product point of view. Seize that moment to go fast, and give that your full attention.

The other project will either peter out, because they made no sense from a product point of view or because leadership lost interest. If they’re simple, can likely be done quickly with the help of AI.

It’s not a pretty answer, but AI has helped me cope with this kind of situation much better than in the past.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#40

Post by simianwords »

dgellow wrote: post #37
simianwords wrote: post #32

If you don’t go fast you deprive your consumers of your product. It’s not clear why that tradeoff is good? There was a recent petition signed by all major AI labs to slow down AI development. Would this author or you guys agree it’s a good thing?

I would, yes, given how unsustainable the whole AI industry looks like. It would be way, way better if they could figure out their things out before pushing so hard for the whole software world to adopt their experimental tech

if they took their time then billions of people wouldn't have access to it for years and decades.

its now super clear that AI is a step improvement in coding, mathematics and other domains. the push for AI has worked out in hindsight.

there will always be people who will parrot the METR study and claim productivity didn't increase but its best to ignore them.

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