Move Fast and Break Things

The Philosophy

"Move fast and break things" was a real company motto, printed on posters, repeated in all-hands meetings, cited in profiles as evidence of a certain kind of bravado. The idea was that speed matters more than perfection, that shipping beats waiting, that caution is a form of slowness and slowness is death. This is not entirely wrong. It is the part they left off the poster that causes problems: "and have a plan for when you break things, and maybe think about what you might be breaking before you break it."

Facebook eventually retired the motto in 2014, replacing it with "Move fast with stable infrastructure." This was less catchy. It was also, notably, adopted after several years of high-profile outages and a recognition that at a certain scale, "break things" has consequences beyond your sprint velocity.