“It’s crazy what programmers, and even managers like me, have to learn every couple of years. Sometimes it’s a totally new database technology, a new programming or project management method, or a new technology delivery model, like cloud computing. “Just how many times can you throw out everything you know to keep up with the latest new-fangled trend? I look in the mirror every once in awhile, asking myself, ‘Will this be the year that I give up? Will I spend the rest of my career doing COBOL maintenance or become just another has-been middle manager?’

— Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project

…recent effort to replicate the hundred psychology papers in “prestigious” journals of 2008 found that, out of a hundred, only thirty-nine replicated.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

Software applications are limited mainly by human imagination. Since human creativity is so vast in potential and computer hardware is still evolving by leaps and bounds, it would be foolish to think of software technology as being mature.

— Michael A. Cusmano, The Business of Software

By using simplistic extrinsic motivators to goad performance, managers excuse themselves from harder matters such as investment, direct personal motivation, thoughtful team formation, staff retention, and ongoing analysis and redesign of work procedures.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware

The Greek notion of science held it above vulgar pragmatics, leading to a pedantic tendency that tolerated intellectual laxity, sometimes with tragic consequences.

— Noah Kennedy, The Industrialization of Intelligence