According to one of the CEO's replies in the other comment thread, one of the drivers to push forward was that they need to meet their sprint goal.

I don't have any inside information but it seems that this could also be a case of the downsides of deadlines. They set a deadline and then all other considerations go out the window when trying to meet that.

For anyone who thinks this is too ridiculous to be true, here is the CEO confirming this was rushed out to meet a fake-Agile fake deadline, without regard for how it might affect users or developers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280137

I am trying to evaluate this as fairly as I can. "Sprint" is one of those words that just ... sets me off. I have to remind myself to be rational and measured in my response.

Having said that, "sprint" is not a word I associate with thoughtful progress toward a reasonable goal. What it does say is "rush forward in a heedless manner" and "don't think, just run."

Another artificial deadline dressed up with terminology that encourages plunging ahead without due consideration.

Lol. Gotta have priorities. That's some serious b school negative work.

Yeah, I think that's certainly part of it. I'll try to be more careful with sprints going forward. But I made the initial plan for the opt-out release before the deadline. So it was also just a pretty bad loss of perspective on my part.

Whoa! Deadline was a reason to push a feature which is big and privacy violating one. Can a bank say due to deadlines we made passwords not encrypted ? The feature which is your core cannot be part of deadlines. If they really intent of user protection, they would have de-scoped it to next sprint.

We did user research about the profiles, but not (crucially) about the opt-out release. That was the fuck up.

In a state that permits users to delete their entire data forever and ever, hallelujah.

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