My favorite quotes from Peopleware:
“Projects on which the boss applied no schedule pressure whatsoever (’Just wake me up when you’re done.’) had the highest productivity of all.”
“Because we go about… work in teams, we are mostly in the human communication business, [not the high-tech business].”
“Quality, far beyond that required by the end user, is a means to higher productivity.”
“Whenever strong emotions are aroused, it’s an indication that one of the brain’s instinctive values have been threatened… In the workplace, the major arouser of emotions is threatened self-esteem.”
“One of my first bosses was Jerry Wiener, who had run a development team for General Electric on the Dartmouth time-sharing project… At the time I came along, the company was about to enter into a contract that was larger than anything it had ever done before. The entire staff was assembled as our corporate lawyer handed Jerry the contract and told him to read it and sign on the last page. ‘I don’t read contracts,’ Jerry said, and started to sign. ‘Oh, wait a minute,’ said the lawyer, ‘let me go over it one more time.’”
You can find these quotes and more on my twitter page.