Failure is predictable because so many software engineers think the conversations about modernizing legacy technology are not relevant to their careers.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology (‘Just do it!’) to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

A lack of focus on a shared language and knowledge of the problem domain results in a codebase that works but does not reveal the intent of the business.

— Scott Millett and Nick Tune, Patterns, Principles, and Practices of Domain-Driven Design

…your attempt to exchange your good judgment for company success will end up failing anyway: you’ll get held accountable for the lack of true impact where others who match the company’s expectation of how a leader appears will somehow slip upward.

— Will Larson and Tanya Reilly, Staff Engineer

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading.

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny