IT – The IT Blog

“Ask for forgiveness, not permission” – The Real Cost of Moving Too Fast

In Germany, there’s a saying: “Besser um Vergebung bitten als um Erlaubnis fragen” (“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission”) or “Gleich mal Fakten schaffen” (“Make decisions fast and set facts”). These phrases often glorify quick action, suggesting that speed leads to progress and success.

Well, I can tell you right now — I really hate that mindset. It may look like a shortcut to success, but in reality, it often creates a mess that no one talks about. The consequences are rarely considered in the rush for fast decisions, and I’ve seen more harm than good come from it. What starts as quick success ends up piling up technical debt, inefficiencies, and unseen costs that will have to be dealt with – sooner or later. And like financial debt, technical debt piles up quietly, and the longer you delay paying it back, the more difficult it can get.

8 Years in my Current Company

At the beginning of the month, a colleague reminded me that I had been with the company for 8 years now! A little anniversary! I reflected about the past years when at the same time a recruiter message reached me, what my motivation would be to “leave my comfort zone“.

Before being here, I changed jobs about every 2 years. The team was always great – super lovely people that I still miss, but I felt like I couldn’t improve anymore, I felt stuck and I felt like I wasn’t adding value to the company any more – and I then did the necessary steps.

It was the first time I joined a larger corporation. And obviously something was different here – otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed so long, right? So I started reflecting what I did all those years long. Was it worth staying? Am I, perhaps, settling into a comfort zone?

Don’t Believe Everything …

We’ve all been there: listening to a talk, podcast or reading about groundbreaking innovations, especially on LinkedIn. It all sounds fantastic, super new, cutting edge technology – almost too good to be true. And often … it is.

Overselling seems to be more common lately – or maybe I’m just noticing it more? Especially with the AI “trend” lately, everyone is “AI first” and doing extremely successful programmes – it seems. But when you get to know someone in the tech field directly, it turns out that we’ve just seen a proof-of-concept project, a project that was stopped after a while for various reasons (didn’t bring the expected results, was over budget, or was never intended to go live at all), or that it is just WAY more complex than illustrated and only the very tiny cool part was told.

It also seems like a pattern to me: The higher someone is in a company, the less reliable their statements are. C-level executives sell visions, middle management sell their successes / themselfes, while engineers are more likely to tell the real story (tech debt, failed experiments, complex architecture and hard compromises).

I think I’ve developed a healthy(?) scepticism. The first questions I ask myself are Who is telling the story (position)? Why are they telling the story (promoting the technology, promoting themselves, promoting a solution)? What is not being said?

The truth seems to be often in the gaps … unfortunately.