Confronted with the fact that the platforms that are making them rich are keeping others poor, they come up with stories to explain why this must necessarily be so. And by degrading failure, anguish, and discomfort to mere stepping-stones, they erase the fact that for so many of us, these stones don’t lead anywhere.

— Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking

If you work in an organization that emphasizes shipping features, then it will be easier to be rewarded for fixing an outage you cause than preventing future outages.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Perhaps computers are not alive by our strict definition of life. But no one can deny that they have evolved into an ever-deepening synergy, if not symbiosis, with us.

— Robert C. Martin, We, Programmers

…the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change.

— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way