We've all heard the words at this point: global recession. Higher inflation. Trade war.

This is the third time in my life I've faced major economic uncertainty — outside stressors that threatened my livelihood. The first was during the 2008 financial crisis. My employer cut 30% of its workforce just to stay in business. I survived the layoffs, but there were also across-the-board salary and benefit cuts. At the time, I was pregnant with my first child and had just bought a house.

The second was the Covid-19 pandemic, twelve years later. At the time it hit and businesses shut down, I couldn't tell what impact it would have on my job. And, on top of that, my husband and I had the same employer, so we felt doubly exposed. While we weren't in an industry that shut down completely, the ripple effects were certainly felt. (Plus we had the added stress of three kids home since schools were closed).

And now, we face uncertainty again. The economy has been anxiety-inducing. Businesses don't know what will happen, so it's impossible to plan. The looming threat of tariffs in the United States could lead to massive cost-cutting measures, including more layoffs (adding to the layoffs seen across the country over the past few years). This is while people already feel the strain of inflation and high interest rates.

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For many years, Facebook (before it was Meta) used the internal motto "move fast and break things." In a 2009 interview with Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg affirmed this business strategy by saying, "Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough." Many companies celebrated this mantra as innovative, disruptive, and bold. A necessary component on the path to greatness.

The people comfortable "breaking things" are often those who have little to lose. They don't personally feel the impact of destruction. They have little regard for the institutional knowledge that's often required to keep systems functional, and no regard for the people who might be harmed as a result.

As it turns out, "breaking things" isn't a flex. Instead, it has the exact impact it implies: causing things to fall apart. While reconfiguration is sometimes necessary to rebuild a system that's not working, carelessness and blinding speed are not the ways to get this done.

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