Speed as a Habit

http://firstround.com/review/speed-as-a-habit/?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9ggNVk_nnVj0i8FtJeM94p3IGWuqjR592d48TjFn1qzNp0b8gR_5_UxJThW5vvsBZua549t83OMHR3SKg8IMpuHco5yg&_hsmi=20749075

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

51 32 11 years ago

firstround.com

francisb072• 11 years ago

This was already posted a few days ago. It's all a matter of perspective though. People see the JFDI speed as piling on technical debt. Others see it as agile or lean.

Personally, speed is a matter of motivation and dedication on how much you want done per unit of time.

collyw• 11 years ago

Everything is almost always a trade off.

arithma• 11 years ago

Yes! Everything else that goes into a product is usually a clear decision, so "everything" that could ever be studied and discussed has a lot of facets into it. When one of those debatable issues undergoes a breakthrough in research/product/tooling, it becomes part of the background known, and again "everything" is still a trade off. It would be interesting to focus on the inherently irreducible tradeoffs that we must undertake, stuff that are ordained by laws of nature (and math?)

calinet65• 11 years ago

Speed, quality, and market fit have the same parent: systems thinking.

If you get your systems right, all three go up at once. The tradeoff is a false dichotomy.

And logically, this makes sense. If you've doubled your workforce, what the hell is preventing them from going quickly and executing well at the same time? Shouldn't you expect a decent bump in efficiency, if not double then at least a moderate increase? What leads to diminishing returns when you grow?

Systems, that's what. The connections between people, between processes, and the methods of management that generate those connections.

Read up on Deming, still the best source of wisdom on the topic.

maest• 11 years ago

I’ve long believed that speed is the ultimate weapon in business. All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win.

That doesn't follow. "All else being equal, best execution in any market will win". Does that mean, that good execution is the ultimate weapon in business?

Off topic: based on the title, I was expecting some drug addict stories.

pennaMan• 11 years ago

I too thought it would be about the drug. But reading it, it's not even that far off, sounds a lot like an addict story. (Not the regret-filled, heroin or meth drug stories. The happy recreational use ones). This guy makes me seriously start questioning my career path in the industry.

thecupisblue2• 11 years ago

I was expecting about how the CEO does speed and how it impacted his work life. Too bad.

vidarh• 11 years ago

In fact, all else being equal, the fastest company might just as well burn through all their cash and go bankrupt faster than the competition.

"All else being equal", if that means all the companies in questions are on the same profitable trajectory, the fastest company probably will win.

The problem of course is that all else is never equal, and speed generally comes at a cost, which means there are plenty of scenarios where opting for a slower approach will be better.

tonyedgecombe• 11 years ago

I've worked for people like this, it isn't much fun.

bonobo3000• 11 years ago

I haven't, but I can imagine "why can't this be done faster?" becoming a tactic to intimidate people into working long hours to meet unrealistic deadlines that keep shrinking. Hopefully thats not the case at Upstart.

calinet65• 11 years ago

It's the right question, but the answer is more complex than the asker usually wants to recognize. Too often it's used as a short-term stick rather than as a means to improve.

For that reason alone, it's best to ignore the speed motivator and focus on what can actually improve to get you to be faster as a team.

fankt• 11 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9923239

mannimow• 11 years ago

With ever-increasing exposure to opinions and personal anecdotes / experiences on the internet these days , it's more important than ever to make your own judgements. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9952875 This was posted today and encourages to take it slow and rationally.

Even thought both articles imply different contexts of 'fast' and 'slow', being caught in the impulsive decision making cycle is very easy, because, as the referenced book "Thinking Fast, Slow" states this is the natural, energy-efficient mode.

A friend of mine went to visit some of the biggest startups in SF (we are from Netherlands) and was shocked with the working culture. Things are going at insanely fast rates, people are irritated and the environment is extremely charged. Comparing to Europe, the work culture is more relaxed, a lot of people work part hours. I wonder what effect it has on productivity, accomplishments and satisfaction with life?

ben_bai• 11 years ago

I like this way better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9952875

"Why slow thinking wins"

dbg31415• 11 years ago

Thank you. This was spot on.

hugofirth• 11 years ago

This guy doesn't really understand what "All else being equal" implies.

The phrase has a very specific meaning in statistics. Any one of us can think of counter-examples where a company which was late to a market ended up dominating it. This article's opening statement allows the author to deflect these repostes, saying "Ah but in that case, company x's execution was much better" or "Company b's marketing push came at a really bad time"; i.e. All else wasn't equal and so your counter-example doesn't detract from the author's point.

This reasoning is problematic. Imagine the equivalent phrase: "If you have two Ferraris, identical in every single way except that one has a higher rate of acceleration than the other, then the faster Ferrari is better". In a vacuum, this statement is so obviously true that it doesn't need to be said.

So the author starts with this statement. As every reader will intuitively agree with it, the author gets them "on side". They then go on to make unsupported claims, which the reader is now happilly innoculated to.

The article's opening is misleading because, effort being a finite resource, all else cannot be equal when it comes to human endeavour. By focusing on speed you inevitably sacrifice time spent on something else such as the rollcage, the breaks, or the looks.

The prediliction for speed and fast execution is systemic in the startup scene right now and it can be very damaging. Don't ignore that risk when pushing to deliver.

We didn't put men on the moon quickly, we did it as safely as we could. Google didn't become the pre-eminent search engine because it was first (it wasn't), but rather because it was the best.

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that misuse of "All else being equal" in this manner is fairly common. That being the case, it is unlikely that the author was purposefully attempting to support an argument they knew to be weak (why would they do so, afterall). Apologies if the tone of the original comment was taken as aggressive :)

pweissbrod• 11 years ago

I was honestly expecting an article coaching how to break unhealthy habits of hasty working/thinking.

In my experience too much speed poses a much greater risk than too little.

I dont agree with the general point of this article

thecupisblue2• 11 years ago

" Google is fast. General Motors is slow. Startups are fast. Big companies are slow."

Google is a startup, not a big company? And this dude leads a business?

tonyjstark• 11 years ago

Only one out of 10 startups does not die in the first 5 years. So they are fast but they also die fast. So much about making fast decisions. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9952875

onion2k• 11 years ago

I half agree with the article. Speed is definitely a good thing when you're behind. If you launch later than competitors and you go faster than them you can catch up. If someone else launches a feature that's popular you can copy it quickly. But if you're already ahead then speed only has one practical advantage - being in a leading position means you'll be the company taking on the cost and risk of testing new features, so being fast means you can correct quickly if they prove not to work. Depending on the market you're in it's often better to go slower and test things in smaller, less costly ways instead.

thesz• 11 years ago

Quote: "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

General George Patton said that, and I definitely subscribe to it. Do you remember the last time you were in a meeting and someone said, “We’re going to make this decision before we leave the room”? How great did that feel? Didn’t you just want to hug that person?"

I, actually, wanted to severely beat that person for depriving me precious silent time alone to think about the decision.

adamtj• 11 years ago

If you are unprepared for a meeting, who's fault is that?

There are different kinds of meetings. You need know what kind one is before you agree to attend. If it's a decision meeting, then you need to do your silent reflection before it begins.

calinet65• 11 years ago

I'll just re-post the same comment I posted on the original posting of this...

I take offense to idea of speed as a priority, though not necessarily to the whole article.

All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win.

All else is never equal when speed is the driving factor. I have never seen a company execute well while pressuring for speed.

It's significantly more important to think about systems. What is the cooperative source of your speed? What are the barriers to making good product quickly? What allows us to make faster decisions?

Invariably, without fail, unequivocally, the answers to these questions—which are sources of speed, quality, and market fit—lie in the systems that compose a company. Not systems as in slow methodical heavy processes, but systems as in a clear understanding of how things are connected and how to continually improve how they work.

Start with systems, then you can go fast. It's ludicrously dangerous to put the cart before the horse. Granted, much of this article dives into detail on how to make things run smoother in order to go fast—that's great, but if you focus primarily on the systemic source, imagine how fast you could go.

Speed... a noble goal, but as W. Edwards Deming said, "By what method?"

Practicality• 11 years ago

Oh, The messes this sort of thinking has caused for me! In my past experience, "Just get it done today" leads to all kinds of complicated problems in the future.

Yes, you can get it done today, but you will have a mess tomorrow. And you might just burn-out all the employees that can fix it.

mironathetin• 11 years ago

Couldn't agree more. In my last team, the 'frontman' was a cowboy coder, who solved management requests immediately. The amount of chaos he produced downstream was unbelievable. Back then I started to understand companies, which get rid of middle management.

This article is a perfect example of a hero manager who doesn't get it, imho. If you are too dumb to think, what can you do except make it a strategy not to.

DennisP• 11 years ago

A great book along these lines is Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business by Chet Richards.

Boyd was a fighter pilot who invented the concept of the "OODA Loop." Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The competitor who can do this faster generally wins...not just by moving faster, but by disorienting opponents, and thus disrupting their OODA loops.

There's more to it than just pushing for speed. If you're doing a poor job of understanding the situation, for example, pushing ahead with fast decisions won't help you.

A lot of what Richards writes about is building a business capable of fast, effective OODA loops.

Speed as a Habit

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