(De)invest for the long term.

In the engineering context, most advice around the topic of what to build/not to build comes from the following:

Invest for the long term.

Which is absolutely true. The problem though is that most engineers, would view this as a license of investing in everything since everything is needed in the long term.

Another approach to counter this way of thinkings seems to be:

Deinvest for the long term.

Which means asking the question:

What are things that we should ditch and are NOT worthy in the long term?

This means that we must not do anything that’s not tied to our core value proposition in the long term.

Example: Building our own logging system? This is a solved problem. Absolutely not a core value prop in the long term for most startups or companies. That means we must not do our own but buy or use a 3rd party solution.

A simple principle that you can apply anywhere.

Salam, peace.