11 Comments
User's avatar
Justin's avatar

What a beautiful read. Thank you for writing from the heart

Neural Foundry's avatar

Brilliant parallel between evolutionary waste and deliberate action. The Gas Town framework embraces churn as a feature, but there's somthing quietly powerful about the alternative: showing up consistently, even when its not optimizing for throughput. I've spent time on both sides, and the stuff that actually meant something wasnt the huge swings but the small consistent actions.

Benn Stancil's avatar

One thing that I've come to appreciate about other industries is how they seem to view progress as a much more linear thing. Chip away slowly; learn a little every day; make things better a little every day. That probably doesn't get you the moonshots tech is always chasing, but it probably gets you a consistently better world.

Juha Korpela's avatar

The focus is throughput; used to be that the focus was output. I wonder if we'll ever reach a stage where the focus is outcome (as tech industry, or as society overall)

Benn Stancil's avatar

There was all this conversation about "outcome-based pricing" at some point recently, which I guess moves in that direction. But it feels inevitably game-able, where people start doing that because it sounds (and may genuinely be) more honest, and it eventually evolves into something that basically measures throughput (eg, we charge per ticket resolution -> oh wait, some tickets cost us a lot more -> we charge different amounts for resolution -> we charge for how much work we do -> we charge for throughput).

Meg Bear's avatar

it is such a confusing and crazy time right now... and in one week the Bay Area hosts a Super Bowl... feels so surreal.

Benn Stancil's avatar

Though if nothing else, Bad Bunny seems like he'll make it interesting.

Leasa Sanders McIntosh's avatar

Gas Town - is all you mentioned: and don't forget Imposter Syndrome! Nice piece

Laurie Stark's avatar

This one is particularly outstanding.

Marco Roy's avatar

Crack Is Wack

Euan's avatar

The ICE segue haha. Would love to see the U.S deportion numbers over time (dem vs rep), it's sad to see the violence being stirred up by media/social, clicks sell. Glad we have a moat here in New Zealand.