R.Y.E. (not D.R.Y.)

There’s a running joke on the GameChanger engineering team that our early code-base valued the little-known software engineering principle of R.Y.E (Repeat Yourself Everywhere). It’s clearly a play on D.R.Y. (Don’t Repeat Yourself), and refers to the spaghetti-like copied & pasted early layers of code written at 3am while customers were screaming for something.

As engineers, we’re tought that repeating yourself is horrible. That the best programmers are lazy is the cliche, and it’s because software designed for reuse is much more maintainable. If you only have one place in your code that you define a routine, you only have to change one part of the code when you need to change that logic.

Which is why it took me a long time to realize that R.Y.E. is actually incredibly important in leadership, even if it’s a joke in engineering. Every employee at GameChanger goes through an orientation I give on our product development philosophy, and I draw this same Crossing the Chasm bell curve every single time. I phrase my statements on our product strategy in terms of Early Adopters, Mass Market, Innovators, etc., to the point that it was suggested I get the Chasm tattooed on my arm.

And today, a Halloween team came in dressed as The Chasm, complete with a lightbulb-balloon for innovators, a gray-haired Late Adopter curve segment, and Wellington wearing a giant $ chain over the Early Mass Market segment.

I couldn’t be prouder of the fact that I’ve repeated myself so often that it’s become a joke. It means we share a common vocabulary and understanding of the problems we face.

As a leader, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Everywhere.