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Sometimes my approach to a technical problem is "do stuff and see if it works" and other times it's "think about the problem for 1 to 3 years before making any moves" and I wish I knew how to articulate when to do which one.

Usually the "think for 3 years" thing is what I end up doing when it's a socio-technical feature with a strong possibility of causing harm if I get it wrong

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Charles Stanhope

@darius I wish we could spread the "think for 3 years" approach more broadly.

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2y
Jolene Smith

@darius Absolutely same! It is definitely hard to articulate, but I feel like the clarity of the choice of approach came with experience for me. I work in state government, so I have the little-appreciated luxury of moving very slowly when I need to. I really value that.

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2y
Glyph

@darius I am so often a champion of “you can’t learn if you don’t ship” and “build safety, then experiment constantly” approaches, which really start to fall apart when your product is basically a giant psychometric challenge trial (with no IRB, of course) on the global population. But I still feel like “stop moving because moving might break something” is just as bad when the stakes are high as when they’re not. Constantly wondering how to resolve this tension.

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2y
Alpha Chen

@darius Way better than my approach of “enter analysis paralysis and never actually do anything”. 🙃

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bnmng

@darius Sometimes I do the stuff to see what works after thinking about it for 3 years

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2y
JoJaSciPo

@darius

If there's a big cost if it goes wrong - wait!

If the time has come to get cracking on something, then dive in!

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2y
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