Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#71

Post by ryguytilidie » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #61

ryguytilidie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its crazy how tribalistic HN has become. The whole Boeing fiasco has produced SO MANY "gosh, all those MBAs are at fault. I assign 0 fault to the engineers!" and every. single. time. There is a problem relating to a management/engineering decision, blame from HN ALWAYS goes to "the MBA types" and very literally never to engineering. I guess I just don't understand what the point of this type of tribalism is? Feeling…

With high position came great responsibility. If the engineer instead of management were making those decision, we would blame correspondingly.

Are you under the impression that management contains 0 engineers and that engineers had nothing to do with the decisions made...?

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#72

Post by ako » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

blondin wrote: post #39

supersrdjan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If anything, tinkering and iterating is the best approach to deal with complexity, which the author says will emerge from the new technology.

oh yea... for next sprint, let's green-blue roll out the update for this new cancer treatment and a/b test it on some patients so we can iterate.

not on patients, but they probably do a lot of iterations and a/b tests on mice. Fail fast is great for medicine research, the sooner you know that something doesn't work, the sooner you can try a new recipie.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#73

Post by jevgeni » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #68

ryguytilidie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its crazy how tribalistic HN has become. The whole Boeing fiasco has produced SO MANY "gosh, all those MBAs are at fault. I assign 0 fault to the engineers!" and every. single. time. There is a problem relating to a management/engineering decision, blame from HN ALWAYS goes to "the MBA types" and very literally never to engineering. I guess I just don't understand what the point of this type of tribalism is? Feeling…

It comes from the fact that all the people at the top refused to back down or slow down despite all the warning flags being raised in engineering, and persisted in maintaining a system of incentives that left engineers in a position to choose between having to do something unethical, and keeping food on their family's table; all in the name of stock price. If it were Engineers at the top, we'd probably be lambasting…

While I agree with your point, I don't agree with the idea, that the engineers there are some Dickensian exploited workers struggling to feed their starving family. Those are white collar middle class employees mostly.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#74

Post by CSSer » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #68

ryguytilidie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its crazy how tribalistic HN has become. The whole Boeing fiasco has produced SO MANY "gosh, all those MBAs are at fault. I assign 0 fault to the engineers!" and every. single. time. There is a problem relating to a management/engineering decision, blame from HN ALWAYS goes to "the MBA types" and very literally never to engineering. I guess I just don't understand what the point of this type of tribalism is? Feeling…

It comes from the fact that all the people at the top refused to back down or slow down despite all the warning flags being raised in engineering, and persisted in maintaining a system of incentives that left engineers in a position to choose between having to do something unethical, and keeping food on their family's table; all in the name of stock price. If it were Engineers at the top, we'd probably be lambasting…

Ethical decisions have consequences that include blame.

Engineers are well-paid, highly sought after individuals. As long as they manage their finances responsibly, walking away from a job should not be as dire as you make it sound.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#75

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

Did it ever? And if so for what value of 'work'?

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#76

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #60

jacquesm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about as nice an example of survivorship bias as you could find. SpaceX came within a whisker of ceasing to exist. If that one launch had failed it would have been game over for them. But they got lucky that time and they have done a fantastic job at keeping their eye on the ball ever since. Every business has one or more of those critical moments in time when things just have to go your way. If you are in a b…

Point taken, but they also don't keep breaking the same things, over and over; simply because it is not cost-effective to avoid the breakage. Makes business sense, but I've always been one of these knuckleheads that wants to write great code; simply because I like to do it. I got into the habit of practicing zero-tolerance on quality. I've never found any level of breakage acceptable in my own work. I literally get p…

When SpaceX breaks stuff it is simply because not all the variables are known, not because they cut corners and harm their customers in favor of their bottom line or speed of execution.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#77

Post by jevgeni » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #59

jevgeni wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geniuses at HBR never claimed in the article that it applies to chips. The article says that increase in chip performance lead to a prevalent strategy in business (mainly tech) to be the first.

Its crazy how tribalistic HN has become. The whole Boeing fiasco has produced SO MANY "gosh, all those MBAs are at fault. I assign 0 fault to the engineers!" and every. single. time. There is a problem relating to a management/engineering decision, blame from HN ALWAYS goes to "the MBA types" and very literally never to engineering. I guess I just don't understand what the point of this type of tribalism is? Feeling…

The problems that MBAs are trying to solve are not those at which your average engineer is particularly good. Also, these problems are usually ill defined and not easily testable. On top of that, to "deploy" your solution you need to show a schizophrenic amount of confidence for the amount of ambiguity and risk you plan to take, and you have to do it all in the form of a PowerPoint slide deck for people who are most likely have no clue what you are talking about and have an attention span of a 5 year old child. All this leads to a relatively high error rate.

So, it's easy for engineers to ridicule them, while still keeping well within their own comfort zone. It doesn't add credibility though, I agree.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#78

Post by ElFitz » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

> With every new generation of chips came new possibilities and new applications. The firms that developed those applications the fastest won.

Initially, I was really disappointed in this article. Facebook, on the client-side, was 'possible' on a Pentium 4. Perhaps a III.

Internet speeds where sufficient in the early 2000's, and MySpace was created a year before Facebook. We all know who won.

I really had a hard time seeing what "chip generations" or "being first" had to do with any of it.

Sure, powerful enough hardware is a pre-requisite. But... I couldn't see any correlation between generations of products / services and CPU power.

In my mind, if there was a correlation to be had, it'd rather have been between said generations of products / services and, first internet speed, and then internet adoption.

And Moore's law didn't have much to do with it.

Then, it hit me. I was on the wrong time scale. He's talking decades. We're not looking at the 20 or even 30 years, but at the last 60 or 70 years.

So, yes, he still misses the entire "internet tipping point", with the associated paradigm shift, that is probably just as important as his precious Moore's law.

But he's also right on how it enabled the Mainframe -> PC -> Smartphone transitions.

Although I still don't believe in the theory that being first matters that much.

Who here remembers Microsoft's UMPCs? Or Intel's MIDs? Or the first third-party iPhone app?

... he does make a point. But I don't know what to make of the whole thing, really.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#79

Post by objektif » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #59

jevgeni wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geniuses at HBR never claimed in the article that it applies to chips. The article says that increase in chip performance lead to a prevalent strategy in business (mainly tech) to be the first.

Its crazy how tribalistic HN has become. The whole Boeing fiasco has produced SO MANY "gosh, all those MBAs are at fault. I assign 0 fault to the engineers!" and every. single. time. There is a problem relating to a management/engineering decision, blame from HN ALWAYS goes to "the MBA types" and very literally never to engineering. I guess I just don't understand what the point of this type of tribalism is? Feeling…

How so? If a certain group of people always CHOSE profit over doing the right thing other people or groups or teams or whatever you want to call them have every right to criticize them.

Re: Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

#80

Post by jm4 » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #59

jevgeni wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geniuses at HBR never claimed in the article that it applies to chips. The article says that increase in chip performance lead to a prevalent strategy in business (mainly tech) to be the first.

Its crazy how tribalistic HN has become. The whole Boeing fiasco has produced SO MANY "gosh, all those MBAs are at fault. I assign 0 fault to the engineers!" and every. single. time. There is a problem relating to a management/engineering decision, blame from HN ALWAYS goes to "the MBA types" and very literally never to engineering. I guess I just don't understand what the point of this type of tribalism is? Feeling…

It’s funny. If an article mentions how much someone in management gets paid, it’s all about how they don’t deserve it, they’re profiting off someone else’s sweat, they’re useless, it’s unfair, etc. Then you see something like a data breach or the Boeing fiasco and management belongs in jail because they didn’t put good processes in place for the engineers.