Why Speed Matters
32 points
by gsky
2 hours ago
| 7 comments
| lemire.me
| HN
hylaride
1 hour ago
[-]
I get what he's trying to say, but the danger is people (especially management) getting the wrong impression. The risk of "move fast is good" is that it becomes hustle culture where people rush under deadlines and eventually burn out. There are plenty of occasions where slowing down and being thoughtful is beneficial. Often stopping focus is what gives eureka moments as the other side of the brain starts churning once new input ceases. There's a reason the cliché story of your best ideas happen on the toilet or in the shower are a thing.

It's like people reading Radical Candor (which I quite like) and concluding that being an asshole is ok.

reply
okr
1 hour ago
[-]
I am all in favor of continuous development. Program. Check-In. Build. Test. Merge to dev. Build. Test. Merge to master. Build. Test. Deploy. I have a very fancy Play Button, that does everything automatically.

But it always takes like half an hour. :))

I usually start then something else. I have many projects open. But its like....these context switches, they are draining.

So yeah, i like to go the dangerous part, deploy right away from my dev machine. But i get immediate reaction. I dont have to wait. But my mates dont like it. And so i deal with it.

reply
andrewrn
24 minutes ago
[-]
To me, the kind of speed that matters is maximizing the rate that your idea/product/work contacts reality. This is only indirectly explained in point 2 at the bottom of this post.

Indiscriminately espousing raw speed for every step is a perfect recipe for burnout.

reply
vanschelven
39 minutes ago
[-]
Reminds me of this:

"""On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups.

Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.

Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the “quality” group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image.

At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo."""

from https://www.thehuntingphotographer.com/blog/qualityvsquantit...

reply
tmtvl
1 hour ago
[-]
Would you rather have a heart surgeon who studied for years, spent years practising and assisting, and took time building up the skills needed; or a heart surgeon who just flipped through a book and watched a video on heart surgery?

Finding the golden middle ground between 'move fast and break things' and 'move slow and fix things' is difficult and as the stakes get higher it's only natural to favour slow, steady, and careful over flying by the seat of your pants.

reply
paulryanrogers
1 hour ago
[-]
The point about work becoming irrelevant is especially painful. SaaS faces rising table stakes from competitors. Locally run software is in a race against platform obsolescence. Some times it feels like trying to surf on a never ending wave.
reply
zkmon
50 minutes ago
[-]
>> Nevertheless, you should move as fast as you can.

For one thing, try defining what you mean by "fast". and what you mean by "move". And why this expectation should be correct for generic cases from any location, time and context.

reply
jakozaur
1 hour ago
[-]
It is even more true with startups and business. Super rushed is bad, but doing for too long decreases quality.
reply