@ASmartBear - WP Engine

“Maximizing” means expending time and effort to ensure you’ve solved something as best as possible. It typically needs lots of exploration and analysis to ensure “the best” option hasn’t been overlooked, and that we have confidence in our evaluation of all options.

“Satisficing” means picking the first option that satisfies some given criteria. It’s less time exploring & analyzing, more time acting. It’s not getting paralyzed by the pursuit of “perfect,” but it often doesn’t result in finding the very best.

In software and startups we can choose when we maximize, and when we satisfice. It might seem like maximizing is best especially when you have teams of smart people who can do the maximizing. But not necessarily.

“Maximizing” means expending time and effort to ensure you’ve solved something as best as possible. It typically needs lots of exploration and analysis to ensure “the best” option hasn’t been overlooked, and that we have confidence in our evaluation of all options.

“Satisficing” means picking the first option that satisfies some given criteria. It’s less time exploring & analyzing, more time acting. It’s not getting paralyzed by the pursuit of “perfect,” but it often doesn’t result in finding the very best.

In software and startups we can choose when we maximize, and when we satisfice. It might seem like maximizing is best especially when you have teams of smart people who can do the maximizing. But not necessarily.

Whenever you’re dithering, usually the correct answer is the difficult one. The reason you’re dithering isn’t that you’re unsure. It’s that you don’t like the truth, so your emotions are trying to justify the easier path.

But your job is to do the difficult thing.

The answer to that question is “yes,” but that’s why it’s the wrong question.

“You must be so proud of what you created” — the reflexive conclusion delivered by visitors to our building at WP Engine, struck by a beautiful place teeming with energy and activity, coming upon the little office of the founder.

“What we created,” I always respond. It’s not false humility. I didn’t create this. There are over four hundred people creating it even as we speak. I haven’t even been the CEO for three and a half years.

If you write your code in a public github repo, others will judge your code, with a broad definition of “quality” that includes everything from file and class organization, documentation, tests, avoiding placing API keys in code, eliminating your reliance on “security by obscurity,” and even that artful quality which like the proverbial US Supreme Court definition of pornography is impossible to define but “you know it when you see it.” In this sense, building in public forces you to create quality, artful code.

The force at work is as simple as it is universal: Ego — your desire to impress others.

Can you redirect the same force to create even more valuable outcomes?

“Worry” causes the very thing you’re worried about, to actually happen.

“Worry” breaks everything, even things which aren’t broken. It doesn’t lead constructively to solutions, it just creates problems.

The opposite of “Worry” isn’t “Apathy.” The opposite is “Planning” and “Preparation.”

With the second major IoT-based DDoS attack having passed through the news cycle, everyone wants to know what can be done to stop it. With the quantity of internet-enabled devices increasing at an accelerated rate for the foreseeable future, we know it the answer to that question has to be answered as quickly as possible.

What if Twitter will never 10x its user-base but remains a critical world-wide communication, sharing, and news system for the next decade?

In the tech industry we’re constantly repudiated that growth is the prime value of business. If your growth dips below the level of “rivets rattling themselves out of the plane,” revenue multiples plummet, and you’re written off by the press as a has-been ripe for disruption by startups 1/1000th your size but “growing exponentially.”

“How do we 10x” is a great question when a startup is young. Does it always remain the right question?