We had a proper disagreement this week. Two of us, dug in, neither budging, the kind where you can feel the room get a little careful. And I want to write about it, because I think it might be one of the healthiest things that's happened here.
When you're this small, every disagreement carries extra weight. There's no manager to escalate to, no process to hide behind, no "let's take this offline." It's just you and the other person and an idea that you both care about, pulling in different directions. And because you all like each other — because this whole thing only exists
because you like each other — there's a real temptation to smooth it over. To say "yeah, you're probably right" just to keep the room warm.
We've done that before. Caved early to keep the peace. And honestly, every time we did, the work got a little blander. The thing we caved on was usually the thing that needed a fight.
So this week we let it actually happen. We disagreed, properly, for a good half hour. Voices got a bit sharp. Then — and this is the part I'm proud of — we found the thing underneath. It turned out we weren't even arguing about the same problem. One of us was protecting how it
felt; the other was protecting how it
worked. Once that was on the table, the heat went out of it almost instantly. We weren't enemies. We'd just been describing two halves of the same animal.
The fix, when it came, was better than either of our original positions. It usually is. That's the thing I keep relearning: the argument isn't the failure. The argument is two people who both care, refusing to settle. The failure is the silence — the good idea that never got said because someone didn't want to make a fuss.
What makes it work, I think, is that the trust underneath has to be solid enough to take the weight. You can only argue hard with people you're certain won't take it personally an hour later. We're lucky there. We can be blunt at 2pm and grab lunch at 1, and nothing carries over.
I don't love conflict. I doubt I ever will. But I'm starting to trust it a little. A studio where nobody ever pushes back is a studio quietly agreeing its way toward mediocre.
Anyway. He was right about the one thing. I'm still right about the other. We'll sort it out Tuesday.
— Thiago & the Pixel Sprout team
Posted by Thiago Moreira · June 18, 2026
← All news
