41–50 of 163 posts
- I'd be curious if the origin is really the Navy seals. I couldn't find in my brief searching any where else... - I like John Wooden's saying "be quick but don't hurry". I mentioned that to a doctor who trained in the mid 20th century and he said that surgeons had a line "hurry, but don't rush"
"Pants on fire" startups would do well to learn from this... a whole lot less stress and better results vs. slamming out midnight patches.
I bet after both the experiences, they will be like: "The only thing we could say with certainty is that how to make effective teams one way or another. 97% you fail or flail. 3% you succeed and succeed big."
If you see the graveyard of MAANG Products you can see a pattern. The sheer volume and size of products that have come and gone IS how they survived[1]. Can any one say, for example, Meta is where it is today by doing any of this Slow is Smooth and that is fast culture?
Sure, there were acquisitions(those too were fast) and there are bad initiatives and orgs (alexa, google+social, facebook phone), but then there are also many amazing things like LLMs and MooCs.
"Pants on fire" startups would do well to learn from this... a whole lot less stress and better results vs. slamming out midnight patches.
Sometimes urgency does matter; for example, when I ran Tinfoil, we got a lot of good press from being the first ones to release a public vulnerability checker for things like Heartbleed and so on, and it was a common reason we made sales. Getting those out within 12-24h was an intentional part of our model, because our competition would take a week, so it was trivial to make them look bad. That said, it was extremely…
This is one of the first really important lessons you learn in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Everyone walks in, day one, and is dumping adrenaline everywhere they look. I mean, the person in front of you is literally engaging you in practicing murder, so I get it. Everyone starts that way. Super tense, super shallow breathing, and everyone wears themselves out in about 30-40 seconds. Of a 6 minute round. Doesn’t matter if you…
Snatching has got to be the most humbling barbell movement ever. Dudes who can easily bench over 100 kg (220 lbs) would never get to close snatching that. (Myself included, but hopefully one day)
"Pants on fire" startups would do well to learn from this... a whole lot less stress and better results vs. slamming out midnight patches.
Except navy seals do tactical operations.
99% of the time navy seals aren’t doing tactical operations, they are setting things up so they can do them when needed. You prepare for doing 48 hours without sleep by being fit and well rested.
"Pants on fire" startups would do well to learn from this... a whole lot less stress and better results vs. slamming out midnight patches.
Sometimes urgency does matter; for example, when I ran Tinfoil, we got a lot of good press from being the first ones to release a public vulnerability checker for things like Heartbleed and so on, and it was a common reason we made sales. Getting those out within 12-24h was an intentional part of our model, because our competition would take a week, so it was trivial to make them look bad. That said, it was extremely…
The problem comes when you’re tackling large, ambiguous problems.
Assuming the premise of this article: efficiency is the only way to survive death(literal or metaphorical). Say what you will about MAANG, but has anyone who is a meta/google etc engineer also been a SEAL? I bet after both the experiences, they will be like: "The only thing we could say with certainty is that how to make effective teams one way or another. 97% you fail or flail. 3% you succeed and succeed big." If yo…
The issue is that if you look at Meta’s successful products…
1. Facebook - would have won whether it moved fast or slow. This was network effects, not “features”
2. Messenger - has not won, and only exists because of Facebook’s aforementioned network effects.
3. Instagram - acquired.
4. Quest - acquired.
5. A bunch of other random shit nobody cares about and will never make Meta money.
I can pretty much guarantee both FB and Messenger would be just as big as they are now if Facebook had “broken less crap.”
Moving fast and breaking shit made working at Meta fun, not necessarily more productive, even if at times it felt more productive to the engineer, since they could push code faster.