Quotes About Efficiency

BITE stands for Browser Integrated Test Environment. BITE is an experiment in bringing as much of the testing activity, testing tools, and testing data into the browser and cloud as possible, and showing this information in context. The goal is to reduce distraction and make the testing work more efficient. A fair amount of tester time and mental energy is spent doing all this manually.

At times, testing is interwoven with development to the point that the two practices are indistinguishable from each other, and at other times, it is so completely independent that developers aren't even aware it is going on.

One thing is for sure: Testing must not create friction that slows down innovation and development.

The studied elimination of non-essentials from one's daily life is a vital factor in all great achievement.

Companies simply don't need the same amount of people anymore to be as productive as they've always been. We are moving toward a society without employees. It's not here yet. But it will be. And that's okay.

It's much better to work smarter, not harder.

When I was running a software company, we always knew it would take one great programmer to solve a hard problem in one night versus 10 mediocre programmers taking a month to screw up a problem even worse.

Prominent behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely has done research that tells us that the peak productivity period in a person's day is 2-5 hours after they wake up. After that, he says, there are declining returns on the work you put in.

You can't get good at something if you are working twenty hours a day. In fact, something is very wrong in your life if that is how much you are working at one thing.

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

As Nassim Taleb mentioned to me on our podcast, "many people drive two miles to the gym in order to walk two miles on a treadmill." Just walk.

You can't get good at something if you are working 20 hours a day. In fact, something is very wrong in your life if that is how much you are working at ONE thing.

need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don't need excessive controls.

Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.

When you have disciplined people, you don't

If you're diversified into five businesses, as we once were, the businesses that only make up 3% of your sales are going to take 20% of your time, energy, and attention. It's just not worth it. Focus. Do what you do better than anyone else. And the results will probably be very positive, as they were for us once we decided to concentrate all our efforts on one line of business.

Avoid matrix structures. In an attempt to have the best of both worlds, some companies make the mistake of creating matrix organizations. Don't do this. Matrix structures remove the fire of personal ownership, not to mention accountability.

The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving."38

We know some effective leaders who work only 40–50 hours a week, but who we nonetheless classify as very hard workers—their level of intensity and concentration when at work is incredibly high. Conversely, we know some workaholics who work 90 hours per week and are basically ineffective. More is not necessarily better.

If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

We hire five, work them like ten, and pay them like eight."31

The right people will do the right things and deliver the best results they're capable of, regardless of the incentive system.

The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.

What is the purpose of budgeting? Most