At growth companies, complexity kills. The reason is simple - complexity is slow, and slow don’t grow. For example, say the software you’re building has a piece of code that has been optimized for the last 4 years, mostly by one SME. It might run 40% faster than a simpler, less optimized version. But it’s become very complex, and even SME has some trouble keeping all of it in their head at once. One final, critical detail - the code is not bad code. It’s actually very good code. Let’s even take it one step further and say that there’s no way to make this code simpler and keep the optimizations, because optimizing this problem is inherently complex.
Complexity Debt
Complexity Debt
Complexity Debt
At growth companies, complexity kills. The reason is simple - complexity is slow, and slow don’t grow. For example, say the software you’re building has a piece of code that has been optimized for the last 4 years, mostly by one SME. It might run 40% faster than a simpler, less optimized version. But it’s become very complex, and even SME has some trouble keeping all of it in their head at once. One final, critical detail - the code is not bad code. It’s actually very good code. Let’s even take it one step further and say that there’s no way to make this code simpler and keep the optimizations, because optimizing this problem is inherently complex.