Comment by steve_adams_86
3 days ago
My wife works for the federal government of Canada. Her and her coworkers are some of the most sincerely interested and concerned people I've met, at least as far as their work goes. I work with chronic job-hoppers and shiny-thing-chasers. She works with people who care deeply about their teams, the quality of their work, the health and purpose of their union, the sustainability of their organization, the safety of their work, etc. They pour so much into it.
I had a thought years ago that the startup I was working for would find them laughably inefficient. Yet that startup is dead and gone, in part because they put none of the same care, intention, and thought into creating something functional and sustainable. We often think highly of how we work from first principles, move fast and break things, or whatever, but I think many of us have lost sight of what having a regular job that gradually, yet more certainly, improves the world around us looks like.
I do think they should strive to innovate more. I often write scripts to automate my wife's work, and it blows my mind how little they've invested in exploring what's possible. Yet they're one of the best hydrographic offices in the world.
The move fast and break things mantra, at least in my estimation, was always about not being fearful of trying new things. The things that break on the way were always going to break in the long run with enough changes accrued over time anyway. Implicit is an assumption that the things that were breaking were the most dysfunctional, or most restrictive parts, of incumbent systems of work or thought. Moving fast for the sake of moving fast, or for the sake of breaking things, was never the goal. It became a slogan of misplaced pride aimed at making movement the goal. At least that’s how I feel about that era.
While I was at Facebook they dropped the "and break thing" off the corporate values anyways. Turns out they just want you to move fast.
I think you’re absolutely right. I was using it in the more abused term, but I actually subscribe to the original intent of it. My wife’s organization would almost certainly be better off if they embraced this mentality even slightly more. Maybe most people would, for that matter.
But yeah, the movement did seem to become the primary goal, and breaking things seemed less about stress-testing and freeing from restrictions, and more like an inconvenience on the path of progress, whatever that might mean. It seemed like a lot of us went from being experimental and nimble to clumsy and incoherent at some point.