Speed or Quality?

We can’t do it like that, Omar. I can either do it quickly or I can do it well.

I always thought this was a false dichotomy but didn’t call people out on it enough. Maybe I was trying to be nice, maybe I was trying too hard to be acceptable. Either way, I didn’t say it.

Like, if you know how to do something well, what’s stopping you from doing it well? Why would you knowingly make something that’s lower quality than you know is naturally possible? Not saying to go out and find an O(1) solution to a P=NP problem, but like, you’re a highly paid engineer, ad you know how to write great code. Why are you telling me that I have to pick from one of the two? This feels like an intellectual strike.

Speed and Quality.

We can move faster and do more iterations per day. Let’s get it done. After all, it takes iterations. Doing it fast means we will do more iterations. We’ll try more things faster. We think we know what the right solution is, but you know the best way to see if we’re right? By trying the thing. By sitting down and doing it. Why are we still talking about this? It feels like you and I are on the same page, I don’t get why we’re still talking about this instead of you doing the thing.

OK great, you’ve done the work. You’ve tried solving the problem. I think you’ve earned the right to have an opinion on this. Here’s the iteration I tried this weekend, I didn’t want to show it to you because I think there’s a better solution but don’t know what it looks like and I didn’t want to bias your thinking.

Speed is Quality

Footnote: I tried writing the last section a few times but nothing sounded right. I thought about waiting a few days until the right words found me, but I think that this this “unfinished” ending says more than 1000 words ever could.