Quotes from Chad Fowler

Without a role model, there's no incentive to get better.

Your leaders want you to have independence and ownership. Making, executing, and communicating plans will help you attain both.

A generation ago, fun wasn't a deciding factor when we talked about career choices. Jobs aren't supposed to be fun. They're supposed to bring home the bacon. Fun is what you do on your off days. Fun happens in the evenings and weekends. But if your job isn't fun, as we've come to realize, you don't do a fantastic job at it.

Programming is full of odd ideas. Using shorter, less descriptive names often produces code that's more readable overall. The most powerful languages usually have far fewer concepts than the lesser ones. And failing and copying may be the best way to produce successful, original work. - Patrick Collison is a student at MIT.

if you're out to change the world, you're bound to make some people angry. That's OK as long as your intentions are right. Don't be a jerk about it, but don't tiptoe around always playing it conservative either.

When promotion and staffing decisions are being made, the best advocate you can have is a customer who doesn't want to live without you. On the flip side, imagine the impact of a customer who thinks you are condescending. Your customer represents the needs of the business, and you are paid to provide for those needs. Don't forget this.

The less replaceable you think you are, the more replaceable you are (and the less desirable you become).

The quickest path to missing your commitments is to make commitments that you know you can't meet.

Your career is stagnating by the minute. You are steadily letting your sedentary computer-programming desk-bound lifestyle turn your body into mush. All of these problems are much bigger and harder to just fix than a bug. They're all complex, hard to measure, and comprised of many different small solutions—some of which will fail to work!

Tip 3:   Coding Don't Cut It Anymore

If I have a team member who has the strength to say "no" when that's the truth, then I know that when they say "yes," they really mean it. A commitment from someone like this is going to be more credible and carry a lot of weight. If they actually hit the targets that they commit to, I'm not going to question them when they say they can't hit one.

You might be "just a programmer," but being able to speak to your business clients in the language of their business domain is a critical skill.

Unless you're really lucky, you're probably not getting paid to be smart. And you aren't getting paid to be a leading expert in the latest technologies. You work for an institution that is, most likely, trying to make money. Your job is to do something that helps the organization meet that goal. All of this careful thought and preparation has made you ready to show up at work and start kicking ass for your company.

The book is also about cultivating the desire to live a remarkable life. Strangely, we don't all set out on the quest to lead remarkable lives when we start our careers. Most of us are content to go with the flow. Our expectations have been lowered for us by the media and by our friends, acquaintances, and family members. So, leading a remarkable life is something you have to discover as even being a reasonable goal. It's not obvious.

Our career is one big series of undirected coincidences.

We're being paid to create value. This means getting up out of our reading chairs and getting things done. To be successful, raw ability will get you only so far. The final stretch is populated by closers—people who finish things.

Heroes never panic. They're always the people who can have a nuclear bomb dropped on their city or crash in an airplane and manage to organize a group, help the survivors, outsmart the enemy, or at least just not break down in tears.

If my role in a relationship is to help someone, I become invested in that person's success. I'm nudging someone along their career on a path that I believe is the right one. So, if that path leads to success, it's my success as well.

Always be the worst guy in every band you're in. - so you can learn. The people around you affect your performance. Choose your crowd wisely.

When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say, "Wow, that was an adventure", not, "Wow, I sure felt safe." - Tom Preston-Werner

You can't creatively help a business until you know how it works.

Concepts and patterns that your brain is sorting through and making sense of are much more scalable and universal than any specific vendor's technology

If you want to stay relevant, you're going to have to dive into the domain of the business you're in

If you want to really learn something, try teaching it to someone else.