Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 13 " We suffer more in imagination than in reality. " ― Seneca   Triggered by the use of the quote   "There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality." in a  tweet by Billy Oppenheimer  published on Saturday. In Jaws, you don’t see the shark until 1 hour and 21 minutes into the movie. That wasn’t the plan. According to the script, the mechanical shark, “Bruce,” was supposed to get way more screen time. But Bruce was built for and tested in a North Hollywood freshwater tank. Oops:… pic.twitter.com/FchkwhcVYm — Billy Oppenheimer (@bpoppenheimer) March 25, 2023 [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 12 " Business outcomes measure the health of the business. Product outcomes measure a change in customer behavior. " ― Teresa Torres Triggered by a discussion of how to align product development goals with business goals in the context of an OKR initiative. My take which is  influenced by T. Torres and others including M. Cagan and T. Herbig :  In the triangle of "business", "customer", and "product", do not try to directly derive the product objectives from the [internal] business objectives, instead look at the [external] business impact for the customer first. See also " What’s the Difference Between OKRs and Outcomes? " by Teresa Torres: "Product teams don’t typically have direct influence over business metrics like increasing revenue. But they do have the ability to directly influence product outcomes—changes in customer behavior—that can ultimately contribute to business outcomes." As Melissa Suzuno st...

Quote of the Week 11 " The amount of hype around AI doubles every 18 months. " ― Gary Marcus   Triggered by Gary's recent  tweet (a variation of Moore's law ) in reply to Sam Altman (CEO OpenAI):   a new version of moore’s law that has arguably already started: the amount of hype around AI doubles every 18 months https://t.co/aZOlvSKtOP — Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) February 27, 2023

Quote of the Week 10 "The limits of my language means the limits of my world." ― Ludwig Wittgenstein   Triggered by the citation in a recent Microsoft Research paper: " Language Is Not All You Need: Aligning Perception with Language Models ". "Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt."  Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung ( Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ),  Satz 5.6 [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 9 "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." ― C. Northcote Parkinson ( Parkinson's Law ) Triggered by the reference in a recent blog post  on Google's decline by Stephen E. Arnold. [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 8 " Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time. " ― Jean-Michel Basquiat Triggered by a recent tweet similar to this one: “Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time,” — Jean-Michel Basquiat pic.twitter.com/O5a91JJNLu — upfromsumdirt (@upfromsumdirt) February 5, 2023 [ LinkedIn ]  

Quote of the Week 7 " The valuable attributes of research men are conscious ignorance and active curiosity . " ―  Willis R. Whitney   Triggered by the use of another Whitney quote in the context of the search for a new coach by TSV 1860 München : "Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do something, when all they need is one reason why they can." [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 6 " Man conquers the world by conquering himself . " ― Zeno of Citium Triggered by a Daily Stoic tweet: "Man conquers the world by conquering himself." — Zeno — Daily Stoic (@dailystoic) January 25, 2023 Source: Wikipedia [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 5 " Objective truths are established by evidence. Personal truths by faith. Political truths by incessant repetition." ―  Neil deGrasse Tyson Cited in the June 2022 " Fantastic Facts and How to Use Them " presentation by Nithin Bopanna. Triggered by the reference to a different part of the presentation  focused on the (ab)use of DORA metrics . [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 4 "W hat makes great products: it is not process; it is content. " ― Steve Jobs Triggered by the content of the video clip in Marty Cagan's " Master Class " presentation @ 19:25 minutes. See also: Cited by many including Max Pucher : "You know what it is? People get confused. Companies get confused. When they start getting bigger they want to replicate their original success. And they start to think that somehow there is some magic in the process of how that success was created. So they start to try to institutionalize the process across the company. And before very long people get very confused and think that the process is the content. That was ultimately the downfall of IBM. IBM has the best process people in the world; they just forgot about the content. And that’s what happened a little bit at Apple, too. We had a lot of people who were great at management process; they just didn’t have a clue as to the content. And in my career I fo...

Quote of the Week 3 " When faced with two choices, flip a coin. When it’s in the air, you’ll know which side you’re hoping for. " ―  Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein Triggered by the use of the quote in Steven Buccini's blog article " 8 Hard Truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job ". Image source: QuotesBerry [ LinkedIn ] 

Quote of the Week 2 " Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. " ―  J ean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr   in  Les Guêpes  January 1849 (6th series, 1859) " The more things change, the more they stay the same. " ―  J ean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr A reflection on the advent of a new year and the changes it brings. [ LinkedIn ] 

Quote of the Week 1 "W e do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy . " ― The Programmers' Credo  Triggered by a tweet of a slight variation of the credo : “ W e do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy .” Startups. pic.twitter.com/a46o5YO1H8 — Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) December 28, 2022 A play on John F. Kennedy's " We choose to go to the moon " speech  ( Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort,  September 12, 1962): “ W e do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard .”   [ LinkedIn ]

2023 Quotes CW 1 "W e do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy . " ― The Programmers' Credo   2022 Quotes CW 52 " W e do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy . " ―  Maurice Switzer CW 51 "B e conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept . " ―  Jon Postel  (Postel's Law) CW 50 " What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people . " ―  Josef Weizenbaum CW 49 " A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good . " ― Martin LeBlanc CW 48 " Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations . " ―  Melvin Conway  ( Conway's Law ) CW 47 " Adding manpower to a late softw...