We can get good designs by following good practices instead of poor ones. Good design practices can be taught. Programmers are among the most intelligent part of the population, so they can learn good practice. Thus a major thrust in the United States is to promulgate good modern practice. New curricula, new literature, new organizations such as the Software Engineering Institute, all have come into being in order to raise the level of our practice from poor to good.

— Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month

Statistics work by eliminating context. Their search for insight begins with the annihilation of meaning.

— Ben Orlin, Math With Bad Drawings

Very successful companies have never struck me as particularly busy; in fact, they are, as a group, rather laid-back. Energy is evident in the workplace, but it’s not the energy tinged with fear that comes from being slightly behind on everything.

— Tom DeMarco, Slack

Avoid at all cost hiring individuals who are deeply cynical. They can poison a development team and create havoc in your organization by sowing dissension and dissatisfaction where those feelings might otherwise never grow.

— Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty, Managing the Unmanageable

The point there was that fragmenting any knowledge worker’s time over many different tasks assures that he or she will be thrust into two or more different work groups, none of which is likely to jell into a real team.

— Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware