Finding my favourite quotes in Red Canary was a lot like going through the shoebox of orphan photographs I keep in my closet.

That battered, polaroid-choked carton invokes a mix of grins and groans – and I felt the same rueful nostalgia while flipping through two years of articles.

But just as fashion ‘indiscretions’ slide into ‘style’, editorial right angles ultimately get hammered straight. And I think this iteration of Red Canary has found its voice. If I can offer any proof, it’s in this selection of bon mots, as collected from interviews, comments, and individuals both more articulate and credible than myself.

Enjoy.

And always.

Thank You for visiting.

Humour

"The job candidate was waiting on the couch in reception…there was a fruit bowl on the little table in front of him. He took a piece and bit in…but it wasn’t what he had in mind, so he put it back."
Anonymous
10 Interview Horror Stories

"Rule number one: I don’t work with assholes"

"I chose poorly when I got my first computer, a TRS80. I had to type in 50 pages of code to play hangman."
Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO, Devshop
Devshop: Shoeing the Shoemakers

"General experience indicates that "husky" girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters"
Guide to Hiring Women, 1943

Start-up Lessons

"With technology now, your competition isn’t just coming from Mississauga or Scarborough, it’s worldwide. You don’t know half of your competition because they can’t be Googled. You think that you only have a few competitors and you just get smashed."
Bryan Kerdman
Smooth Ex-operator

"The final fight is in software. Apple is experimenting with a new business model. It could change how applications on the mobile platform will be distributed and monetised."
Tim Tang
iPhone, BlackBerry, and the Android

"Don’t ever underestimate the role that luck plays in your life…I’d be very happy to say that all of this is my own doing, but I can’t. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to meet the people I did (in the early days) my career could’ve gone in a completely different direction."
Leila Boujnane, CEO, Idee
Picture perfect: A profile of image-recognition company Idee

"Get out from behind John A. MacDonald’s skirts and get onto the world stage. Use a global yardstick not a "provincal" one!"

"There’s a lot of lessons learned in that first 30 months and a lot of mistakes made too. You have to make them and you have to learn by them, and adjust."
Kevin Dwyer
Interview: Kevin Dwyer

"Bear in mind that VCs spread their risk across several companies. You, on the other hand, only work for one company at a time. They’re not necessarily smarter than you—they just get to make more bets."
Mario Laudi
Know Thy VC

"A start-up is essentially an Agile business – you wake up every morning and never know what fire you’ll have to put out or what change of plans you’ll have to make"
Craig Fitzpatrick
Agile as a management method and organizational philosophy

"Shut up and execute."

Roy Pereira.
Startup success: People, money and opportunity (Part I)

"I’m not so foolish to think that a website is the only aspect of technology marketing, but if the public face of your company looks like Jimmy Durante, then I have doubts about the efficacy of everything else you’re doing."
Trevor Stafford
290,307 reasons why this is the best marketing I’ve ever seen from a Canadian technology company

People

"Imagine a hill with two tigers, extraordinary players come with extraordinary expectations and extraordinary egos."
Ashok Kalle
Ashok Kalle: Benevolence and good business on the ‘Pathway’ to success

"Hire intelligent, creative, kickass people. You shouldn’t care about what language they know or whether you have a position that’s right for them."

Brad Sim, COO, Sandvine
The Sandvine Way

"90% of technology job descriptions are a lot like a bad blind date. They say the same things – in the same vaguely selfish way"
Trevor Stafford
It’s not you, it’s me: A blind date guide to job descriptions that don’t suck

"Don’t shy away from uber-talent because of compensation. If Michael Jordan wanted to play for you, would you pay him for it? What’s winning worth to you?"
Mario Laudi
7 hiring tips for startups

"You cannot hire masses of asses and you can’t settle for second-best."
Scott Broder
Mr. What’s Next

"We’ve really used the mafia theory to hire: somebody needs to vouch for you…and then they’re responsible for you doing well."
Dave Wessinger CTO, PointClickCare
Profile: PointClickCare

"The raw material of technology products (whether services, software or hardware) is time. The product can only be as good as the raw material – the time and creativity of the people building it." Its best to start with great raw materials – which means hiring the right people"
Colin Toal
One Red Question – greatest tech challenge

"The cost of losing a first-year sales hire is more than $120,000. 60% of sales hires don’t make it past their first year."
Theresa Spengler
Startup Sales Talent: The Good, The Bad, The 2.0

Careers

"Because programmers don’t usually think in terms of careers, they often get blown from job to job like a leaf in a gale, until they find themselves in a dead end job with nowhere to go, and wonder ‘how did I get here?"

Bruce Taylor
Career Plan for Devs? What’s that?

"How drunk I am on weekends (as surmised by photos on Facebook) does not have anything to do with how I perform on the job"
Anonymous
Can you be Googled?