To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.
Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
There are running jobs. Why don't you go chase them?
I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the boy asks, 'What can I do with it?'.
If today were the last day of my life, Would I want to do what I’m about to do today? And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
…giving tax incentives for more labor ownership of company stock will do more to create jobs and increase productivity than all the “emergency full employment” bills proposed.
It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
Government has the responsibility to provide the climate in which Americans, all Americans, have an opportunity for good jobs; and not only for good jobs, but an opportunity if they have the ability and the desire, to be owners and managers, to have a piece of the action, because if they have a piece of the action, then they believe in the system rather than fighting against it. [Junior Chamber of Commerce Speech, April 26, 1971.]
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do
I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
What have the masses been clamoring for? Jobs and welfare, and they got ‘em. They’ve also got unions and managements like two armies converting the whole economy into a battleground with the customers as victims, except that the victims are also in the army. They think in battle terms by day and like customers at night.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
The process of learning someone’s hometown, college, names and ages of children, favorite hobbies, favorite restaurants, previous jobs, and long-range goals provides a raft of opportunities to connect with her over shared interests and keep up a dialogue.
I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.
I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success — I have no problem with their success. They’ve earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.
We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being WalMart. We make it by innovation.
It's not a faith in technology. It's faith in people.
You can get lost on your way home. You can get lost looking for love. You can get lost between jobs. You can get lost looking for God. However it happens, take heart. Others before you have found a way in the wilderness, where there are as many angels as there are wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too. All it takes is one of them to find you. All it takes is you to find one of them. However it happens, you could do worse than to kneel down and ask a blessing, remembering how many knees have kissed this altar before you.
[H]ere is an educational bombshell: Take from all of today’s industrial nations all their industrial machinery and all their energy-distributing networks, and leave them all their ideologies, all their political leaders, and all their political organizations, and I can tell you that within six months, two billion people will die of starvation, having gone through great pain and deprivation along the way. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ] However, if we leave the industrial machinery and their energy-distribution networks and leave them also all the people who have routine jobs operating the industrial machinery and distributing its products, and we take away from all the industrial countries all their ideologies and all the politicians and political machine workers, people would keep right on eating. Possibly getting on a little better than before. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ]
U.S. labor leaders will realize that automation can multiply man’s wealth far more rapidly than it is multiplying at present and that automation will leave all men free to search and research…. Realizing the direct competition with foreign industry on a straight labor basis will mean swiftly decreasing wages per hour and longer hours and decreasing buying power of the public…. American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ]
I have something to tell you today. Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life — for the past five years.
When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.
board member and confidant after Jobs’s return in 1997.
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
We are in agreement with the desire of workers to increase their income… [H]owever, we insist that most of this increased income should be derived from ownership of capital. Any other policy leads to the disorderly taking from the owners of capital the income which rightfully belongs to them. Our government increased this disorder by creating many economically unproductive jobs. Of course most of the funds for such jobs are derived from property and corporation profit taxes which further discourages ownership of capital by the majority of our people…. If property can confer dignity, material comfort, and security upon the few, it can do the same for the many…. We note the repeated affirmations by Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI, John XXIII, and Paul VI] of the natural right of all men to private property and their growing insistence upon the need for making ownership and its benefits serve the needs of all of God’s people…. We suggest that the perennial emphasis of the Church on the right of individuals to own [productive] property deserves reaffirmation at this time and that we should consider bold new steps to enable the vast majority of God’s people to become owners of property which will constitute for them a source of a second income. We maintain that this will help reduce poverty and to restore human rights and dignity to millions. [Des Moines, Iowa, June 19, 1968.]
One of the proven ways of getting workers more involved with their jobs is by dovetailing employee profit-sharing and stock ownership plans with greater responsibility sharing…. Trade unions in this country should…consider these arrangements much more carefully than they have up to now…. Expanded employee profit participation and stock ownership would provide workers with a greater measure of economic and social independence, thus stimulating increased productivity….
Technology has no function except to save labor. Yet how often do we hear that the purpose of new capital formation is to create jobs?
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.
The pace and intensity of technological advance are without historical precedent. The creation of new industries may not provide enough jobs fast enough to replace those lost as a result of technologically caused productivity increases. [Quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1995.]
A final word should be said concerning the status of free blacks. Before the American Revolution this status had been ambiguous, and the number of free blacks was insignificant. <...> A rash of new laws, similar to the later Black Codes of Reconstruction, reduced free blacks almost to the status of slaves without masters. The new laws regulated their freedom of movement, forbade them to associate with slaves, subjected them to surveillance and discipline by whites, denied them the legal right to testify in court against whites, required them to work at approved jobs, and threatened them with penal labor if not actual reenslavement.
I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete.
Experts agree that “thinking” computers almost certainly will replace people in millions of jobs in many industries and offices. “Currently, around 25 to 28 million people are employed in manufacturing in America. I expect it to go down to less than 3 million by the year 2010,” predicts Carnegie-Mellon’s [Dr. Raj] Reddy. “So we have only 30 years to decide what those millions of people are going to be doing.” He adds that society cannot expect the slack to be taken up by jobs in the service industries, leisure, research, and white-collar work — “because even there the same revolution is coming.” Reddy worries that “no one (in power) understands what’s happening or grasps the extent of what’s coming.” [“Artificial Intelligence,” Business Week , March 8, 1982.]
XXVI: If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance. XXVII: Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank. XXVIII: It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee. XXIX: Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to their jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective results hang on about half a decade. XXX: By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions. -- Norman Augustine
Speak roughly to your little VAX, And boot it when it crashes; It knows that one cannot relax Because the paging thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! I speak severely to my VAX, And boot it when it crashes; In spite of all my favorite hacks My jobs it always thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow!
There are running jobs. Why don't you go chase them?
Here I sit, broken-hearted, All logged in, but work unstarted. First net.this and net.that, And a hot buttered bun for net.fat. The boss comes by, and I play the game, Then I turn back to net.flame. Is there a cure (I need your views), For someone trapped in net.news? I need your help, I say 'tween sobs, 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. -- Rob Pike, on X. Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be gone in two years. He was half right. -- Dennis Ritchie Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong. -- Jim Gettys
All this big deal about white collar crime -- what's WRONG with white collar crime? Who enjoys his job today? You? Me? Anybody? The only satisfying part of any job is coffee break, lunch hour and quitting time. Years ago there was at least the hope of improvement -- eventual promotion -- more important jobs to come. Once you can be sold the myth that you may make president of the company you'll hardly ever steal stamps. But nobody believes he's going to be president anymore. The more people change jobs</p> the more they realize that there is a direct connection between working for a living and total stupefying boredom. So why NOT take revenge? You're not going to find ME knocking a guy because he pads an expense account and his home stationery carries the company emblem. Take away crime from the white collar worker and you will rob him of his last vestige of job interest. -- J. Feiffer
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house, Not a program was working not even a browse. The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care, Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer. The users were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of inquiries danced in their heads. When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear. More rapid than eagles, his programs they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name; On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete! On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete! His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean, From Weekends and nights in front of a screen. A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread... -- "Twas the Night before Crisis"
Why are programmers non-productive? Because their time is wasted in meetings. Why are programmers rebellious? Because the management interferes too much. Why are the programmers resigning one by one? Because they are burnt out. Having worked for poor management, they no longer value their jobs. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
"For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with computers altogether?" -- Jehan Shuman
Be it our wealth, our jobs, or even our homes; nothing is safe while the legislature is in session.
Sick Building Migration: The tendency of younger workers to leave or avoid jobs in unhealthy office environments or workplaces affected by the Sick Building Syndrome. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others. They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix. Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time, which is all the time. -- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks Did gyre and gimble in their cave All mimsy was the CS-VAX And Cory raths outgrabe. "Beware the software rot, my son! The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash! Beware the broken pipe, and shun The frumious system crash!"
There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to a man who answered one door. "How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man. "Forty dollars." "Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes. Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again. "All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says, "That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
<kira> is a surgical war where you go give the foreign troops nose jobs?
Back in the early 60's, touch tone phones only had 10 buttons. Some military versions had 16, while the 12 button jobs were used only by people who had "diva" (digital inquiry, voice answerback) systems -- mainly banks. Since in those days, only Western Electric made "data sets" (modems) the problems of terminology were all Bell System. We used to struggle with written descriptions of dial pads that were unfamiliar to most people (most phones were rotary then.) Partly in jest, some AT&T engineering types (there was no marketing in the good old days, which is why they were the good old days) made up the term "octalthorpe" (note spelling) to denote the "pound sign." Presumably because it has 8 points sticking out. It never really caught on.
The duke was thinking _he'd_ been doing pretty well till the king come to show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. He had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-officehorse billsand took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advanceso they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own headthree verseskind of sweet and saddishthe name of it was, "Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart"and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it.
"If you were ever to have any other jobs of this sort, my brother is the strong man for you. A perfect Turk!"
Minister flicken am Staate, / Die Richter flicken am Rate, / Die Pfarrer an dem Gewissen, / Die Aerzte an Handen und Fuszen! O Jobsen! was flickest denn du? / Weit besser! Gerissene Schuh!=--Ministers cobble away at the state, judges at the law, parsons at the conscience, doctors at our hands and feet; what cobblest thou at, friend Jobson? Far better--shoes that have been torn.