Most operating systems allow you to start up your machine in safe mode. Safe mode loads the operating system with only the absolute essential software. It is generally useful for debugging issues and diagnosing problems. If you always boot your operating system in safe mode, you would never get anything delightful done.Life also has a safe mode. You can take decisions to avoid failure and make do with minimum risk. You can decide to always operate in safe mode. But would it enable you to live life at its fullest? Would it make it fun? Would it make you feel alive?

Power and Bias should have an inversely proportional relationship.

Do you not check the expiry date of milk from a reputed brand? Do you not check your car for flat tires even if you have bought a car which cost more than $50,000? When interviewing someone, why assume that somebody knows something just because they graduated from a reputed university or they have good references. Always make sure to test that they have the required skills for the job. 

Every sentence is formatted as bold, every ticket is high priority, every task is urgent. If you are projecting everything as important then nothing really is. Emphasis gains its value from being surrounded by de-emphasized items.

Work with people who are not afraid to put their jobs on the line, who do not make decisions optimized for job security, who are willing to invest in doing the right thing even if it means going against the grain.

When merging a Pull Request, the reviewer and the developer are both equal partners in crime.

In my personal opinion, Super Duper makes the best vegetarian burgers in the city. One thing that they have started doing recently is to ask every single customer placing an order over the counter - “Have you been here before?”. Every Single Customer.There are two possibilities - either you are new to the place or you had been there before. Based on your answer, the next sentence changes as below - New: “We can help you if you have any questions”Existing: “Welcome back”There are many problems with this on-boarding process:Lack of Delight: You are not offering anything delightful to the new customer. If somebody has any questions, they will ask you. It would not matter if they had been at the place before or not. Remembering is hard: As there is no “Remember Me” checkbox for humans, it is very likely that the employee behind the counter will forget if you have been there before. Even if somebody had really sharp memory, there could be different people working different shifts at different locations. So its reasonable to assume that this would not work most of the times.Annoyance for frequent customers: For people who visit the place frequently this is an annoyance because you have to answer the same fucking question again and again every time.This behavior makes me wonder about one question - would you annoy your existing customers under the pretext of possibly making things better for new customers? And not even make things better for new customers?Just focus on doing what you do best - “MAKE GREAT BURGERS”. Don’t try to be all fancy pants and solve a problem that does not exist. 

If you plan for a hotfix, you blew it.

For any project, its extremely vital to set the right expectations. What problem is something going to solve, what its not going to solve and conveying that information to the decision makers.

Lets say you find the toilet seat in a shared restroom to be dirty. Do you clean it yourself, do you inform the concerned authorities or do you let it go and pass the baton onto someone else? You did not cause it but are you responsible for it once you find out? Whatever you decide to do, it serves as a good rough indicator of your mindset for any other shared resource like shared code, culture, values or anything else.

You don’t need permission from a job title to change stuff, to make an impact. Job title is a placebo, its not doing anything apart from creating an illusion that its going to help you make a difference. Don’t let that job title or job description stop you. To quote Ayn Rand “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

Any system is built upon a set of assumptions. Assumptions help us make the right trade-offs. If you change the underlying assumptions of a system, make sure that the system can handle the updated set of assumptions.

Ethnicity, color, race, gender, voice or anything on similar lines is an immutable characteristic of a person. It is extremely evil to criticize or discriminate anyone over it.