Why "Move Fast and Break Things" Doesn't Scale

🎯 The Startup Phase

"Move fast and break things" works when:

• You have few users (breaking things affects few people)
• You're finding product-market fit (speed matters more than stability)
• You can fix things quickly (small codebase, simple systems)

⚠️ What Changes at Scale

When you have millions of users, breaking things has real consequences:

• Outages cost money: Downtime = lost revenue
• Bugs affect many: A bug that affects 1% of users is thousands of people
• Complexity compounds: Quick fixes create technical debt
• Reputation matters: Users expect reliability

✅ The Balance

You still need to move fast, but with guardrails:

• Test before you ship: Automated tests catch bugs before users do
• Deploy incrementally: Feature flags, canary deployments, gradual rollouts
• Monitor everything: Know when things break, fix them fast
• Code reviews: Catch problems before they ship

🔄 The New Mantra

"Move fast with safety." Or "Move fast, but don't break things."

Speed still matters, but reliability matters too. You can have both.

💡 What I've Learned

At scale, the cost of breaking things outweighs the benefit of moving fast. But you don't have to choose:

• Good tests let you move fast with confidence
• Good monitoring lets you catch problems early
• Good processes let you ship quickly without breaking things

💭 My Take

"Move fast and break things" is a startup phase, not a permanent philosophy. As you scale, shift to "move fast with safety."

Speed matters, but so does reliability. The best teams find the balance.