Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings Quotes

“One hour projects take one hour to complete. Four hour projects take a day. One day projects take a week. One week projects take a couple of months. And, six month or longer projects tend to never complete.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“You, dear reader, should take away from this time in my life that you must always be thinking about how marketable you are. I was right about that. If you have only one skill and the market for that skill is limited, your upside is limited and your downside is wide open. If you get lucky, your company will never have a layoff. If you wait long enough, you’ll get a raise or promotion. If you are good, work hard, and work for the right company, this is a viable strategy. But it’s not one that will give you true job security or allow you to skip steps as you climb the career ladder.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“true creativity required small entrepreneurial groups.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“As much as I love creating and marketing brands, the real value in a software company comes from the people behind the products.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Great products are not created by committees.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction Author”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Walter Forbes was sentenced to twelve years of prison and to pay a penalty of $ 3.2 billion. His wife divorced him immediately.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Roberta is more decisive, with confidence in her opinions, whereas I tend to see everything in shades of gray. Nuances count to me and I always try to make sure I really understand both sides of a decision before arriving at a conclusion. And, whereas Roberta usually believes there is always a right and a wrong answer, I tend to think there are multiple right answers and the trick is in picking the best one of many, or deciding which of many sets of tradeoffs is the most acceptable.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“With age I’ve gotten better at saying things people don’t want to hear,”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“All I can say in my own defense is, “Management isn’t a popularity contest.” There’s another expression that some would claim applied, but that I’ll disagree with: “It’s my way or the highway.” I was very good about listening before making a decision. In general, my favorite decisions are unanimous group decisions. I would keep people debating a topic for hours until we had group consensus. If a meeting ended and one person was unhappy, it would bother me and I’d meet with them to make sure I understood their issue.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.” Peter Drucker, Management Consultant”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Being us, whoever we are, is tough work. It's nice sometimes to not be you.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“When the product is right, you don’t have to be a great Marketer” Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, Father of the Mustang”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“I constantly argued that if you were to take the two greatest book authors in the world and have them collaborate on a book, the result would not be as strong as their producing two independent books. Teams muddle products.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“It’s a tricky concept to convey, so I’ll use an analogy from music. There are musicians who can play any music exactly as it is written. There are musicians who are technically flawless. But, the ones who make it big are not necessarily the ones who can “stay on beat” or “hit the highest note” or “move their fingers the fastest.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Don’t do magic numbers. Have you ever seen something like this in code? “total = sales * 1.06.” My guess would be that the 1.06 is there to represent a 6% sales tax. But, why should I have to guess? Why not use a variable (or, a constant) called SALES_TAX_RATE? The code will read easier. Or, better yet, pass in the sales tax rate to the method as a parameter.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“I like routines with names that clearly say what the routine does; names like: “get_input_from_customer” or “put_record_to_database.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“if you write code constantly trying to see it through the eyes of an engineer two years down the line who has to make a change to it, you will find that the code completes on time and on budget. It will debug faster and be more reliable in production.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“And, regardless of what they may say, even those people who fight the hardest against grading systems hope to find an A player when it comes time to get their refrigerator repaired.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“My “big idea” was to use the VersaWriter to mark end points of lines into the computer rather than storing the picture pixel by pixel.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“If you are an engineer or an engineering manager, and take away only one thought from reading this book, here’s what I suggest it should be: “One hour projects take one hour to complete. Four hour projects take a day. One day projects take a week. One week projects take a couple of months. And, six month or longer projects tend to never complete.” Ken Williams”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“There is one book that I’d recommend to anyone seeking a career as a software engineer, or who wants to go boating, or just about anything else: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“As I was trying to figure out what to do, a team of former Microsoft employees led by Gabe Newell formed a company named Valve and was able to license the Quake engine (the underlying technology that made Quake so awesome).”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor, it’s your mistake.” Bill Gates”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“I saw that a tiny company called Microsoft had put a programming language called “BASIC” onto the TRS 80.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“Just a few of the many companies I worked for in the short five-year period before starting Sierra: Bekins Moving and Storage, Burroughs Corporation, Groman’s mortuary, McDonnell Douglas, Fredericks of Hollywood, Sterling Computer Systems, Financial Decision Systems, Informatics, Aratek Services, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Chaffey Junior College, the State of Illinois, Warner Brothers Studios, Atlantic Records.”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line

“…I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money…”
― Ken Williams, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line