The techbro grindcore mindset is abhorrent. I work my eight hours. I go home. Anyone who works long hours is a schmuck. Anyone who works long hours and proselytises about how hashtag startup life is great was most probably dropped on their head multiple times as a child.
I will only ever put in the bare minimum to not get fired. I do this because of the co-founder/CEO of a startup I worked for a while back1.
He loved the Silicon Valley cliche “Move Fast, Break Things”. He literally had it tattooed in thick gothic script on his chest (alongside some other — which were in retrospect — vaguely fascist Nordic iconography).
Any time an employee came to him with a problem he’d immediately and violently pop off his shirt and point at the tatt and chant “What’s our only rule around here? We move fast! We break things! Now quit being a fuckin’ pussy, and sort your shit out.”
Sidebar: He must’ve gone through like 12 ripped and de-buttoned shirts a week. One time a staffer had to go to the Emergency Room because a flying button dislodged her cornea.
Then he’d order you out of his office and do 50 press ups and 100 ab crunches before donning a fresh new shirt.
Of course, his adherence to this “rule” did not actually extend to other people breaking stuff or making even minor mistakes.
This hypocritical double standard came to the fore with one of the few staff who were “old timers” at the company. I’d note “old timer” meant anyone who had been there longer than 10 months. This place had incredible churn. Whole teams turning over in weeks because the CEO either fired them or, more often, he infuriated people so quickly with his shirt popping they rage quit.
So this old timer, we’ll call him Barry, is on his third “quit being a fuckin’ pussy, and sort your shit out” in as many days.
Everyone in the room saw something in Barry’s brain break at the exact instant the CEO’s plosive P in “pussy” sprayed saliva across Barry’s face.
He kinda went cross eyed and gurned for a microsecond, but after that moment a spark was kindled in Barry’s eyes which had not been there before. He just nodded, wiped the saliva off his face, brushed aside the shirt buttons from his MacBook keyboard, and walked out as the CEO started his pushups.
For the next eight days Barry was pretty much glued to his desk. For the first five days he subsisted entirely on three dozen Monster Energy drinks and snacks from the vending machine. After that he stopped eating and drinking completely. He was a man possessed. He was coding hard. His mechanical keyboard was a constant clatter and his muttering and giggling provided an uplifting ambient background hum for the office.
The CEO was actually kinda stoked Barry was finally on board with the Move Fast Break Things rule. And we spotted them high fiving multiple times in the last two days as Barry’s random pronouncements became prophetic in nature: “I’m gonna Move Fast and Break Things”, “This company will be forever changed”, “I’m doing mow work than anyone here ha ha ha ha ha” and “ALL HAIL BARRY… CODE DÆMON FROM HELL”.
Toward the end of the seventh day of his epic work-a-thon, Barry sent an All Staff email inviting everyone to a Showcase meeting so he could run the entire company through his update to the product.
On the eighth day Barry isn’t at his desk. At 11 he sends a reminder the meeting will take place. At 11:50 we all pile into the board room. The screen has Barry’s slide deck ready to go. He’s somehow wrangled a dry ice machine and a DJ. The CEO is fuckin’ hyped. He’s preemptively popped off his shirt and is just mincing around slapping people’s asses.
At 12 sharp the dry ice machine goes berserk and the DJ drops 2020 by Suuns and the room goes silent as Barry sashays in. He’s had a shower, a shave, a hair cut, and he’s wearing a three piece suit. He’s one suave mother fucker.
“Here’s my maaaaan,” the CEO shouts as he goes in for a chest bump which Barry artfully dodges and the staff all have to stifle a collective laugh as the rebuffed CEO almost topples over.
Barry takes his place in front of the projector. Laser clicker in one hand he bows deeply as the CEO starts a chant: “BAZ. BAZ. BAZ. BAZ. BAZ”.
No one else joins in.
Finally Barry clears his throat and clicks through to the first slide.
“What is [Company Name]?” he asks.
“Fuckin’ awesome,” the CEO yells back.
Barry clicks through to the next slide that just has “Fuckin’ awesome” in royal blue comic sans. There is an audible gasp from the staff.
Barry chuckles charmingly: “That’s right, [CEO’s name]. That’s right. And what’s the one rule at [Company Name]?”
The CEO ecstatically yells “MOVE FAST. BREAK THINGS” amongst an underwhelming smattering of a response from the rest of the staff.
Barry clicks through to the next slide, which of course says “MOVE FAST. BREAK THINGS”, once again in royal blue comic sans.
The CEO is absolutely fizzing with excitement at this point. He might have wet himself (or spilled his drink. But I choose to believe it was piss pooling around his chair).
Barry surveys the room. And starts his soliloquy. I didn’t record it, so this is all from memory. But you’ll get the gist of what he said.
Hark, thou noble assembly of [company name], hearken to my tale, for I bear witness to the apex of corporate wisdom, a motto most divine, yet in its divinity, a folly too profound.
“Move fast, break things,” [our CEO] did decree. Oh, how these words ring through these hallowed halls, cherished by all, as though bestowed upon us by celestial beings. But, pray, let me regale thee with a tale of utmost devotion to this doctrine.
Behold, I, the humble servant, did dedicate myself to its precepts for the past eight days. With great ardor, I undertook a task most grand, a transformation most magnificent. The once-stable code, a monument to reliability, hath been rendered a labyrinth of chaos. Instead of beseeching our patrons for recompense, we have decided to rain riches upon them, for using our fractured, glitch-laden creation. A gesture of unmatched benevolence, methinks.
‘Tis a revelation, is it not? For, in the throes of this epiphany, I have glimpsed a blinding light. Our beloved credo, “Move Fast, Break Things,” hath become an instrument of our own undoing. While they exult in disruption, I have revealed that there exists a hair’s breadth betwixt innovation and sheer lunacy.
Perchance, it is time we reconsider our guiding principles and unearth a more sagacious approach to progress. Or perhaps, we shall persist in moving swiftly, breaking all that lies before us, and watch as our realm crumbles in the face of this unbridled tempest. ‘Tis all one, is it not?
Barry clicks over to his final slide which is the front page of the company website completely reskinned to look like it was a GeoCities site from the early 90s. All the text is in royal blue comic sans. There’s even that stupid dancing baby gif.
Silence.
The CEO, being an absolute plonker, doesn’t understand the enormity of what Barry has just laid upon us (albeit in a pretty tacky faux Shakespearean speech). He starts enthusiastically clapping and yelling thanks to Barry for finally “getting it”. But nobody is listening. They’re all starting to pull out their phones and laptops to see if he had actually made these changes live.
He had.
Not only had he changed the site, but he’d started selling lawn mowers and, here’s the kicker, we paid you to buy one.
Shit I bought 10 right then and saw the money pop into my bank account moments later along side AusPost notifications telling me my order was about to be shipped.
Pandemonium — an understatement — broke loose as Barry signalled the DJ to start blasting Zack Hemsey’s Mind Heist from the Inception trailer and with one final bow he dissolved into the increasing cover of the dry ice cloud.
All in all we “sold” about 12,500 lawn mowers that day to around 970 people (most of whom were current or former staffers).
The CEO had the Legal Team trying to get us out of a) buying and shipping 12,500 lawn mowers and b) clawing back funds from the people who “ordered” 12,500 lawn mowers.
However in their audit they found some other financial irregularities and the board and technical co-founder made the CEO resign about three weeks later. The company closed down about two weeks after that.
Now I mow lawns for a living. 8 hours a day. Not a minute longer.
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I’d like to note it is not, in any way, referencing New Zealand’s favourite CEO who also has a penchant for royal blue comic sans. Nope. Na uh. No way.
Stay safe, stay sane,
<3
JJW
- I shan’t name the company, or the CEO, for legal reasons. ↩︎
