Tag Archives: Tom Taylor

Don’t Buy Anything Your Life Depends on from Tom Taylor or the Really Interesting Group

This paean to developers from Tom Taylor, of London-based design firm Really Interesting Group, is too stupid and full of self-important bullshit to ask you to read it in its entirety, so I’ll sum up the excerpts:

You’ve either shipped, or you haven’t. You’ve either poured weeks, months or even years of your life into bringing a product or a service into the world, or you haven’t…If you’re lucky, enough happens…And if you’re not, all the tradeoffs you made will turn out to be in the wrong direction, and all the bugs and issues that you hoped would be discovered by no-one will be discovered by everyone.

But whatever you do next, you’ve shipped. You’ve joined the club.

And the next time someone produces an antenna with a weak spot, or a sticky accelerator, you’re more likely to feel their pain, listen to their words and trust their actions than the braying media who have never shipped anything in their lives.

As my boss retweets…”Um dude the media ship CONSTANTLY”. Something Tom Taylor should know, since his group claims to have the BBC and something novel called the “Newspaper Club” in its project list.

But of course, the bigger problem with Taylor’s short essay is that it seems to boil down to: “Hey, it’s more important to push something out the door, even if certain flaws may result in horrible, fiery deaths for your users. Because being part of “the club” is what matters.

Wow. Taylor’s and his group’s software sounds really interesting. But let’s hope he’s not in charge of anything important.