“It’s burnt.”
“So what? They arent paying for it, anyway.”
Pause, as Jon Favreau looks at John Leguizamo, the de facto sous-chef in the food truck. The depth of that pause is instantly evident. Jon takes his son out the food truck and talks to him about his work. Or more of his work ethic. Not so much in those terms because after all, he’s talking to his 10-year-old son. But at the end of it, “So, do we give them that burnt sandwich?”
“No, Chef.”
~
In a light-hearted, somewhat fast-paced, but delectably picturized American drama, you find a nugget of pure-gold wisdom about how to conduct your affair with the thing you’re most passionate about. You don’t serve burnt sandwiches. No matter what.
Somehow though, most people insist on doing just that. Never makes sense. In my time as an employee in startups building things from scratch, I’ve seen people override the idea of building really great things in favor of being out the door first. The cloak is saying, “Dont look for perfection. Ship fast.” Philosophically sound, but we ship shit. And not just once.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with conscientious developers who are plagued by the guilt of serving burnt sandwiches because the product owners force them to. Every fifth stand-up call meeting is one of these developers lamenting about the product, begging for some time-off to fix things, pleading to the lofty, oftentimes non-tech product managers to make new sandwiches.
“No, let’s focus on shipping the product first.”
~
The epidemic is because 8 out of 10 people living on one side of the street are looking to make money. The impassioned speeches in the conference rooms are smoke. Perfection may be unattainable but the threshold of refinement at which we let your product out the truck speaks volumes about how much we care about our profession and, in some, about how much we care about the people we aim to serve.