Users become attached to their programs and system software. Software is expensive. Getting it to function properly often takes time. Software that works is precious. Users don’t idly discard it.

— Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine

For people are no longer owned by a company but by something worse: the idea that they need to be employable. The employable person is embedded in an industry, with fear of upsetting not just their employer, but other potential employers

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

we quickly forget the names of modern internet ‘heroes’, because tomorrow new ones will take their place. We may also forget that our own names and lives are just as fleeting, as we stubbornly try to engrave them in the world of social networks. We somehow believe that if enough people hear about us, our lives will matter.

— Maryna Lazareva, Virtual Dissolution

If there are biased reasons to say the Sun is shining, that doesn’t make it dark out.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

Your success as a company isn’t measured in activity or effort put in, but in results. Why not manage your teams the same way?

— Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian, Helen Kupp, and Stewart Butterfield, How the Future Works