The Same Problem, Every Week

Maya gets hired after a 15-minute Zoom call. No reference checks, no second round — just a gut feeling and a calendar slot. Three days in, she realizes the company has no idea what her role actually is. And neither does she. The job description was drafted in Slack, then forgotten.

A ping comes in at 2PM: Hey, how did we handle the Johnson refund issue last quarter? Three people spend the next hour reconstructing what they did, trying to remember who solved it and how. The person who actually knew left a month ago, frustrated that no one ever listened when she suggested writing things down.

Meanwhile, the exec team celebrates how fast they make decisions — and wonders why the same problems keep resurfacing.

The Allergic Reaction to Stability

Every shortcut makes sense on its own. Skip the review to ship faster. Defer the maintenance to chase growth. Bypass the approval to close the deal.

But shortcuts compound like allergens. Soon, the organization develops a sensitivity to its own foundations. Each fire avoided by moving fast becomes evidence that the next corner can be cut too.

The billing system breaks, but there's no time to fix it right. Just patch it and ship the next invoice. Charge the cards.

These companies pulse with energy. Decisions made in disappearing threads. Features shipped. Deals closed. Metrics climbing. All while the actual infrastructure quietly collapses. They feed the machine, and the machine now prevents anything from lasting, by design.

The Historian’s Position

Someone always sees it first. You raise it, gently, in the sprint retro: the same bugs, the same fire drills, the same “quick fixes” that break again two weeks later.

Your manager’s eyes glaze over. A look that says we don’t have time to look backward. You realize, maybe too late, that you’ve become that person. The one who remembers what no one wants to relive.

The loneliness doesn’t come from nostalgia. It comes from knowing exactly how this will break, and watching everyone do it anyway.

You’re the one saying the foundation is cracking while everyone else marvels at how fast they can run.

The Breaking Point

There’s a moment when the cost of going fast exceeds the value of the speed itself. When shaving a day off delivery ends up costing a month in rework. When momentum turns pathological.

The dev process generates more bugs than features. The sales cycle burns through trust faster than it can replace it. Hotfixes pile up, each more expensive than the proper solution they replaced.

Inside, it still feels like progress. Look how fast we move! But what’s actually being accomplished, quickly and proudly, is the prevention of understanding.

Slowing Down

I used to think we were being agile. Then I realized we were just moving too fast to notice we were lost.

The risk isn’t slow motion. It’s false motion: speed without structure, urgency without memory.

Real velocity comes from stability. Good systems and shared context. Decisions you don’t have to make again every week.

The satisfaction doesn’t come from slamming on the brakes. It comes from watching something steady take shape — because someone finally said what everyone felt: the speed we built to help was quietly burning us down.

Two instincts. Two reflexes. Same outcome: what starts as survival becomes self-sabotage. The cure becomes the disease. And fixing it begins by noticing when the medicine stops working.

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