Brett Taylor rebuilt Google Maps in 48 hours, creating infrastructure ten times faster that still runs today. Apple shipped the original iPod in seven months, launching a trillion-dollar transformation. Speed and quality aren't opposites when teams focus intensely and test rigorously.
You can either have it good or you could have it fast, right? This is a false dichotomy meant to pigeonhole you into mediocrity. Google Maps was a POS before, a piece of shit, right? And it was clunky. It didn't work before. And then Brett Taylor here, who runs Sierra now, was pissed off and he rebuilt it from scratch within 48 hours doing a coding binge over the weekend. It became the infrastructure that is still— that still runs. It's one-third of the size and literally 10 times faster load times, right? Then you have the initial iPod. It was conceived, designed, and shipped to customers within 7 months of starting by— what is this guy's name? T. Dell and Apple, right? It became the basis of a 10-year transformation of Apple into a trillion-dollar empire. That 7-month sprint was somewhat unprecedented in consumer hardware, but built a foundation. You cannot have the people on your team that are just like, oh no, we can't do it. You want to build with great testing frameworks, pre-mortems, and intense heads-down focus, right? You're going to increase the velocity and urgency. When people try to say, oh no, we can't do it that way, it's your job, especially if you're a leader, to say, oh no, but we can.
