Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Philipp Tautz

When I just started working in Rakuten (at the time Japans biggest EC company) I noticed the propaganda, pretty much first day.

Posters. As a child of East Germany, propaganda posters jump me.

There was:

Responsive, responsive, responsive!
Think around the corner!
Speed speed speed!

And others. Singed as “Mickeys Voice” (mickey being Mikitani Hiroshi, Founder and CEO of Rakuten).

As is with all propaganda, everyone ignored them and most people did not even notice when they changed.

Speed. That one was big in Rakuten. Speed. Don’t loose time. Don’t waste time. Speed.

Fuck

Since I live in Japan and not Silicon Valley, I don’t know how much the scene there (or in Europe) is infested with this idea of speed. Here it’s a virus and basically an antidote to social ills (people work insane hours, but that’s mostly forced and inefficiency and another story).

I have worked here in many different companies, small to big, restaurants (as a dishwasher; literally), schools, startups and enterprise. The one shared value was speed.

Now, speed is a good thing. But speed must not equal haste. And here is the issue:

People mistake speed / haste as an antidote for taking too long, for not succeeding, for wanting to reach a goal faster.

Lets take any number of start ups here: they have fallen prey to the idea of living fast and dying rich (or young, which is more likely).

In the US that may mean: working long hours, sleeping on the floor (that happens in Rakuten too; Rakuten / Mickey like to see themselves as a startup), crunch, loads of energy drinks and not seeing your partner or friends for a while. All for the dream of gaining some stock options (not even equity, just options! 🖕🏻) and making it rich. The modernised version of the so called American dream that has ever only worked for a select few white men.

Anyway, in Japan the idea is much the same. If you are lucky and work for a founder of foreign shores, you might see crunch and relax times. (As it should be!)

You Might!

If you work for a Japanese startup, you are more likely to be trust into 8 to 10 hours a day crunch time, every work day. Japan has a word for death from overwork. You might also just not have holidays, sick days, etc.

You might just work for a Black Kigyō.

The results are of cause globally the same so I won’t list much here. Only:

Quality does not exist
You will never be happy working
You might just die.

I have tried to counteract that in every company I worked in, as individual contributor, as a team member and as manager. Actually, I welcome deadlines and clear planning (yay scrum!) and I welcome working on a tight deadline if it makes sense, coz it can help me with being creative. (This project for Slush Tokyo was done in a couple of weeks and highly successful for example.) But no one can do that all the time. It’s insane.

Many founders, CTOs and CEOs have told me:

In a startup only speed matters.

The answer is obvious: 🖕🏻. But I generally like to respond:

Sorry, but you are mistaken. Sure speed is important, but not what matters most. Ideally you have a good and competitive idea, but to get anything of the ground, you need good execution.

Good execution means:

Know what you want to do
Plan well
Build a good team
Good fast when you have to and relaxed (not slow) when you can. And relaxed should be the majority of the time.

Of cause, with this you might not magick a unicorn company, but that chance is so small, that I won’t entertain it.

All of this is to say: if your boss / co-worker / friend or lover demands speed, it’s high time to move on.

And that, if you can, pronto.

Speed, speed, speed was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Speed, speed, speed

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