[geofft]

I've found maximizing company value to be a pretty good end goal as an individual contributor (and it's definitely the thing I'm most excited about doing when I walk in the door in the morning). It's how you tell whether "fix this bug" or "implement this feature" is higher priority, or whether "do this thing now in our current system" or "experiment with this completely different system" is higher priority. You can do all of those at speed; the question is which to do. And getting it wrong dooms your company, because you're wasting effort.

In a well-functioning company, I don't need to make that decision myself, of course: I have management who has evaluated the cost of having the bug and the benefit of having the feature, or who's experienced and smart enough to determine whether doing the short-term thing now or investing in the longer-term thing will be likely to have better payoff. Because this process is there, if I trust my management, I don't have to spend-time second-guessing them (or worse, doing the research myself), and then I get to move quickly. But again, moving quickly isn't the point. It's a tool on the way to delivering value.