Ship fast and break things! I used to live by this phrase.
Until it felt like playing the lottery with Jira tickets. Frantically building products, hoping one makes the difference.
Sure, ship lots of things and some turn out great. But there must be a better way?
Kind of reminds me of this thought experiment from philosophy 101. Give keyboards to billions of monkeys, wait long enough, and one monkey is destined to write Shakespeare.
Imagine the one lucky monkey on Lex Friedman's podcast. "I spent decades typing gibberish. Until one day it all came together! The secret to writing Shakespeare (or Facebook) is to keep typing. Thinking is for monkeys who don't take action!"
Is that the right lesson? What might the other monkeys teach us?
"That was dumb and a waste of time."
Maybe given enough time and engineers, amazing products do magically happen. But there's got to be a better way.
Personally? I'm done playing the software lottery. I've watched enough blindly shipped products fall flat with users. I think taking time to understand what you're building beats accidentally shipping Shakespeare.
Listen to users - not just about ideas, but their struggles. Show them early mockups and watch their eyes light up (or glaze over). It's the difference between shipping random code and building something useful. Will there still be mistakes? Of course. But the odds are much better.
Maybe it's time for a new mantra.
"Think first. Ship second."
Yes, if success is measured in shipping, this is slowing down. But I'd rather build products that are thoughtfully designed than millions of lines of gibberish.
In my experience, the best products aren't built fast or slow. They're shipped with purpose.