It’s time to say it out loud: BUILD LESS SOFTWARE
Centering too much on adding new functionality will break your product, your users, and your team. Maybe your business. 1/10
Thread
Conversation
![Daniel Markham](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="73" height="73"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
Reply
Replying to
Features are not the sole driver of product value. “Quality” almost never comes from new capabilities — usually adding stuff makes things worse for a time. It comes from the quiet work of tending the garden. 2/10
3
74
701
In the rush to find PMF of course you’re going to build like crazy — you’ve got to cram as many ideas into the product as you can to see what plays. If you’re lucky you have the time to evaluate what’s working as you go. 3/10
2
5
216
From PMF onward the drive to add more will never stop. Users have new needs and your product teams have awesome ideas. You fall in love, and you want to give those users everything, you want to support every amazing opportunity your teams can dream up. 4/10
2
4
187
Gravity will always pull you toward building more. And keep building it fast, of course. Don’t worry, we’ll come back and refactor later. You won’t though — unless you treat code quality and design investment as essential to the success of your product. 5/10
2
32
323
It’s fucking hard. No prospect tells you they’d buy your product if only you’d complete that JS to Typescript conversion, or finish your design system. But I’ve worked in an org that was so mired in debt they couldn’t ship. Literally could not. For two years. 6/10
3
32
349
This doesn’t happen with a bang, but with a whimper. Work to the right ignored or delayed in favor of what’s next in the backlog. Code reviews rushed, or guidance ignored. Tests skipped because they’re broken. IA becoming increasingly byzantine. 7/10
1
13
221
Product leaders, y’all need to deeply give a shit about this. And when you get religion and understand how these problems will harm your users, you need to use whatever capital you have to pull back on adding features, as hard as that will be. 8/10
3
20
261
What harms your users will, in the end, harm your business. If you continue to crank out features without regard for the other dimensions of product health, enduring value will elude you. 9/10
3
27
236
This is not a subtweet! More of a reminder to myself. As I said — it’s fucking hard. Keep trying.
BTW if this resonates — I’m hiring for a director of product at Honeycomb. Come talk to us 
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="216" height="204"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
9
8
243
Replying to
Almost any successful app becomes ever more annoying because more and more features get in the way of doing what the app was originally designed for, until it becomes unbearable and alternatives need to be found until they are killed the same way.
1
1
24
So wouldn't the solution be to BUILD MORE APPS instead of trying to put every single feature into a single one? ;)
1
4
Replying to
It’s easy to build a lot of software but hard as shit to live with it and make it great
2
2
47
The path of improvement does not get folks promoted, most places.
33
Replying to
Breakneck speed of features is a recipe for disaster. It usually implies desperation. Security, skill level, solid engineering all suffer as is noticeable when things break. People immediately notice garbage software and hate on it. Don't be that one.