5 exercises — understand the idioms of tech company culture: engineering philosophies, product strategies, and the colourful language used in meetings, standups, and pitch decks.
Tech industry idioms covered in this set
"Move fast and break things" — Facebook-era philosophy; now used critically
dogfooding — using your own product internally
"boiling the ocean" — an impossibly broad, unfocused approach
yak shaving — a chain of prerequisite tasks pulling you off course
hockey stick growth — slow then suddenly steep growth curve
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
"Move fast and break things" is a phrase you'll hear in conversations about tech company culture. What is it associated with?
"Move fast and break things" = early Facebook's engineering philosophy:
This phrase was Facebook's internal motto under Mark Zuckerberg, circa 2009–2014. The idea: it's better to ship quickly, make mistakes, and learn fast than to be slow and overly cautious. Speed of iteration was seen as a competitive advantage.
The context shift: By 2014, even Zuckerberg abandoned the phrase, replacing it with "Move fast with stable infrastructure." The original motto became widely criticised as tech companies scaled — what works for a startup with 10 engineers is dangerous when millions of people depend on your platform.
Today it's used critically or ironically:
"They really moved fast and broke things with that data privacy rollout." (criticism)
"Classic 'move fast and break things' — they pushed to prod on Friday." (sarcasm)
Related tech culture phrases:
"Fail fast" — related concept: test ideas quickly, validate or invalidate early
"Done is better than perfect" — another Facebook-era motto favouring shipping over polishing
"Iterate" — build, learn, improve — the underlying practice behind these philosophies
2 / 5
A tech company's engineering blog post says: "We believe in dogfooding all our developer tools before releasing them to customers."
What does "dogfooding" mean?
Dogfooding = using your own product internally before releasing it externally:
The full phrase is "eating your own dog food" — if you make dog food, you should be willing to eat it yourself. In tech, it means: if you build a product, use it yourself. This was popularised at Microsoft in the 1980s, when managers urged teams to use the software they were building.
Why companies dogfood:
Teams discover bugs that external users would hit, but before those users do
It builds empathy with the user experience — engineers feel the pain directly
It signals confidence in the product ("we trust it enough to use it ourselves")
Famous dogfooding examples:
Google employees use Gmail, Docs, and Meet internally as primary tools
Meta engineers use Facebook and Instagram before public releases
Slack was famously developed by a team that used it to build itself
The opposite: "Shoemaker's children go barefoot" — a company that builds great tools for others but neglects its own internal tooling.
3 / 5
During a sprint planning meeting, someone says: "We can't try to boil the ocean here — let's scope this down to the MVP."
What does "boiling the ocean" mean in this context?
"Boiling the ocean" = trying to accomplish something so massive it's practically impossible:
The metaphor is literal: you cannot boil the entire ocean — it's too vast and the effort is hopeless. In project management and product development, "boiling the ocean" describes an attempt to solve every aspect of a problem simultaneously, with no focus or clear scope.
How it manifests in software teams:
A sprint backlog that tries to redesign the entire authentication system, migrate the database, and add three new features — all at once
A project plan with 47 workstreams and no clear priority order
A team that can't ship anything because they're trying to make it perfect from day one
The counter-strategy (what the speaker suggests):MVP = Minimum Viable Product — the smallest version of a product that delivers value and can be tested with real users. Scope down, ship, learn, iterate.
Related idioms:
"Boil the frog slowly" — different meaning: gradual change goes unnoticed
"Scope creep" — the project growing beyond its original definition
"Big bang release" — releasing everything at once instead of incrementally
4 / 5
A developer says: "I spent three hours on yak shaving yesterday — I wanted to add a test, but first I had to fix the test runner, which needed a newer version of Node, which broke two other tools..."
What is "yak shaving"?
Yak shaving = a recursive chain of prerequisite tasks that keeps you from your original goal:
The phrase originates from a Ren and Stimpy episode, popularised by MIT researcher Carlin Vieri and widely spread through developer culture via MIT's SIPB. The scenario:
You want to add a test
To run the test, you need a newer Node.js version
Upgrading Node breaks your package manager
Fixing the package manager requires updating your shell config
Two hours later, you're "shaving the yak" — doing something seemingly unrelated to your original task
Why it resonates with developers: Software environments have deep dependency chains. One small change can trigger a cascade of necessary updates, each one pulling you further from the original goal.
How teams handle it:
Recognize it early: "Am I shaving a yak? Should I stop and come back to this?"
Time-box the detour: "I'll spend 30 minutes on this; if it's not resolved, I'll ask for help."
Document the chain: "I needed X, which required Y, which needs Z" — helps communicate the delay
Related concepts:
Rabbit hole — going deep into a tangential investigation
Scope creep — the task expanding beyond its original definition
5 / 5
An investor pitch deck shows a graph of user growth that is flat for 18 months, then shoots steeply upward. The presenter calls this "hockey stick growth". What does this describe?
Hockey stick growth = a growth curve shaped like a hockey stick: flat, then suddenly steep:
A hockey stick has a long, nearly horizontal handle and a blade that curves sharply upward at the bottom. Applied to growth charts:
The handle = a long period of slow or flat growth (often months or years)
The blade = a sudden, steep upward acceleration
Why this pattern matters in startups: Most successful consumer tech companies experienced this trajectory. The early flat period is when the team is building, iterating, and finding product-market fit. The inflection point (where handle meets blade) is when something clicks — network effects, viral growth, a major partnership, or media coverage — and growth suddenly accelerates.
Famous examples:
Facebook, Uber, Airbnb all showed hockey stick user growth curves early on
iPhone app downloads showed a hockey stick pattern post-App Store launch
Related growth vocabulary:
Inflection point — the moment the curve changes direction