"For every Steve Jobs, there are a thousand leaders who learned to hire smart people and let them build great things in a nurturing environment of empowerment and it was AWESOME. That doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It doesn’t mean letting people do bad work. It means hiring smart people who get things done—and then getting the hell out of the way."

"The shop I want is owned by a person I know and respect. Inside of this shop are two button-up shirts, a pair of jeans, three pens, a desk, & a small white marble polar bear. Each of these items is picked out specifically for me, & more importantly, they are items that, given my own devices, I would never choose or possibly even discover for myself...

"I have always believed that there is a natural, organic rate at which a business should grow & that if we expanded too fast, the wheels would come flying off...For the longest time, I smugly thought: We're profitable, our sales are rising, we make terrific products & our customers love us. So what do we have to worry about?...We do have a large competitor in our market that appears to be growing a lot faster...The company is closing big deals with big, enterprise customers. And the wheels are falling off the donkey cart over there as the company stretches to fulfill its obligations. Meanwhile, our product is miles better, and we're a well-run company, but it doesn't seem to matter. Why?...if you're not taking any risks, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail. Somewhere, there's someone out there who is taking more risks than you, and that person's business is growing faster than yours, and that person's business may one day come to dominate your industry while yours withers away."

"Because salary information is viewed as particularly sensitive, employers often go to great lengths to keep it under wraps. Some companies even make it a fireable offense for employees to compare salaries...trouble with keeping salaries a secret is that it's usually used as a way to avoid paying people fairly...not good for employees -- or the company. When my partner & I started Fog Creek, we knew that we wanted to create a pay scale that was objective & transparent. As I researched different systems, I found a lot of employers tried to strike a balance between having a formulaic salary scale & one that was looser by setting a series of salary "ranges" for employees at every level of the organization...felt unfair to me. I wanted Fog Creek to have a salary scale that was as objective as possible...manager would have absolutely no leeway when it came to setting a salary. & there would be only one salary per level."