If one had to pick a general to lead the North to victory in the Civil War, few would bet against George B. McClellan. He graduated second in his class at West Point and was known for his engineering feats in the Mexican War. By the age of thirty he was chief engineer and vice president of a railroad. At thirty-four, he was commander of the main Potomac Army.

No one was better at organization. The ragged army hanging around Washington was soon transformed into the most disciplined army of the war. Supply lines were secured, meals readily available, and army drills run. Under McClellan never did a soldier worry about going hungry, being sleep deprived, or ponder what their individual responsibilities were. The men loved the discipline and routine. Few generals were more respected by their men. If McClellan were a software manager, the bugs and features would all be estimated, capacity would be known, and the feature roadmap planned.

Unlike McClellan, Ulysses S. Grant had humble beginnings. He served as quartermaster in the Mexican War and also at Fort Vancouver. He tried his hand at farming and business but failed at both. Rumors spread about his drinking. He struggled with his finances. At one point, his parents and in-laws both extended move in offers. If McClellan’s life was filled with success, Grant’s was filled with disappointment.

During the Civil War, Grant worked his way up by achieving victories through decisive action. But his leadership not his victories set Grant apart from other generals. Grant was among his men, leading, coaching, and encouraging. Where other generals slept in private quarters, Grant slept among his men. When other generals hung back during battles, Grant led them. With other generals wearing uniforms tethered in awards, Grant wore plain ones. While other generals talked to their men, Grant talked with them.

More than any other general, Grant led his men while others managed them. He oozed enthusiasm and confidence. If Grant were a software manager, he wouldn’t be in the corner office shouting commands but rather among the developers answering questions, resolving conflicts, pioneering code, and building skills.

If Grant gave Lincoln joy, McClellan gave Lincoln worry. It didn’t take Lincoln long, however, to see the hard exterior of McClellan was instead filled with empty shells. Despite his great planning ability, McClellan always had excuses as to why he couldn’t attack the enemy. Instead of confidence, he was constantly afraid of being beaten—a fear his men picked up on compromising his ability to lead. It got so bad that even the southern generals knew he wouldn’t attack. No doubt McClellan would be an organized software manager that could fit into many companies but the lack of confidence and ability to execute—something developers notice quickly—should not be overlooked.

Lincoln could not ignore McClellan's lack of leadership any longer. Lincoln let George B. McClellan go.

No one was more astonished at George Washington’s silence as President of the Constitutional Convention than John Adams. While Washington lead America to independence through decisiveness, now he was leading America to greatness through silence. All during the convention, few said less.

Although Adams and Washington both believed in a strong central government, the way they expressed their opinions couldn’t have been more different. Adams preferred an aggressive style often alienating colleagues while Washington embraced a humble manner. If Adams drove people from the table, Washington drove them to it.

But more astonishing than his silence was its effectiveness. During the heated discussions on the floor, Washington sat from his elevated chair withholding opinion. When many struggled with the powers of the President being proposed, a simple glanced upward reminded them of its importance.

If Washington taught us anything, it’s that you don’t have to talk to get your way. Washington knew better than most that smart people have to come to their own decisions. Bickering, interrupting, and insulting doesn’t convince anyone. Sometimes simple silence is all that is needed.

A few years into my career I had a meeting with the VP of Engineering. The meeting was to go over my API. I answered questions quickly and confidently. My eagerness caught up with me, however, when I was told to shut up by the VP. I was more shocked than anything.

Days after the meeting my manager came over to talk. I was taught a valuable lesson that day. He taught me that everyone must come to their own decision about whether the API was the right thing. Questions about it were not attacks on my intelligence but rather ways for them to understand if I had gone about it the right way.  I had to let others come to that conclusion themselves. Like Washington, sometimes that means being quiet.

Even John Adams came to realize the importance of letting others come to their own conclusions. When the Continental Congress was wrestling with issuing the Declaration of Independence, one of Adam’s constituents wrote him asking what was taking so long. Adam's response showed his growing maturity.

Some people must have time to look around them, before, behind, on the right hand, and on the left, and then to think, and after all this to resolve. Others see at one intuitive glance into the past and future, and judge with precision at once. But remember you can’t make thirteen clocks strike precisely alike at the same time.

Whatever Adam’s thoughts on the delay of the Declaration were, he had to wait. Too often I see mostly inexperienced developers grow impatient over what they see as a no brainer technical decision. To them the solution is as obvious as becoming independent from Britain. Often this impatience is shown during meetings with frequent interruptions, rude comments , or eye rolling. Worse than the behavior is its effect on their ability to convince others. They don’t know what Adams and Washington know.

In December 1776 Trenton, New Jersey was in full control of Hessian troops—who were recruited to help fight for the British. Known for their fighting strength, they helped drive the Americans from New York and New Jersey. If there was a way to beat the British, the Americans couldn’t find it.

That all changed during the night of December 25th, 1776. During that night a nor'easter arose. Confident in their ability to route the Americans in any environment, the storm provided welcome relief. The morning predawn patrol was canceled. So confident were the Hessians that Colonel Rall, the commander in charge, calmed his subordinates by stating: “These clodhoppers will not attack us, and should they do so, we will simply fall on them and route them.”

While the Hessians were making plans for a relaxing night, Washington’s troops were crossing the Delaware into the teeth of the storm. By 8:00 a.m. the first shots into Trenton were fired completely surprising the Hessians. The Americans routed them capturing 896 Hessians and killing 22. The once confident Colonel Rall was dead.

Like the Hessian troops in Trenton who were confident in their abilities, developers can also become too confident but instead of abandoning their patrols they abandon testing their code. The thoughts start innocently enough. Just a simple code change. Get in then get out. No need to run it.

For all the code mistakes developers make nothing is more embarrassing than the obvious one. What time developers save by not running the code is lost in respect among their peers. When these developer aren’t testing their code, they are dreaming of how it ought to run.

Whatever the reasons for not testing code, experienced developers are more susceptible to it. Just like the experienced Colonel Rall neglecting the basics, I have seen code checked in that plain doesn’t work and would have been easily caught if run. Things like a mistyped web link or a for loop that doesn’t terminate correctly. Checking in untested code–even if a simple change–is irresponsible.

Running your code is one thing, thoroughly testing it quite another. My first tech lead was shocked when a bug was found in his code. When his reaction wasn’t shock it bordered on denial. At first I was taken aback by this but soon came to appreciate it. No matter how experienced, he not only tested every line he wrote but thoroughly tested the combinations of inputs. So fortified was his code, that bugs reported on it were rare. Colonel Rall could have learned some things from him.

While my first tech lead’s reaction to bugs was shock, most are not. This is concerning. Did they spend the effort testing their code? Shouldn’t they be more confident in it?

There are many signs of a good developer but none are more important than confidence in their code because of proper testing. Like any good general knows, it’s the basics.

Benjamin Graham in his book Intelligent Investor advocates an approach to investing called value investing—buying stocks below their intrinsic value. No one internalized Graham’s value strategy better than Warren Buffet. Buffet knows the returns come not from buying the undervalued stock but rather what happens when the market realizes its true value.

Just as Buffet’s dedication to value investing earned him greater profits, businesses can earn greater profits by delivering their products and services faster. In a world where companies compete selling similar products, the ability to deliver faster will generate not only more business but also higher prices.

The book Competing Against Time illustrates the benefits of delivering faster. An example highlights Atlas Doors which makes industrial doors. In an industry growing at 5 percent with deliver dates between 12 to 15 weeks, Atlas takes only 3 to 4 weeks to deliver a door while growing at 15 percent. Not only were they growing faster, their profit margins were 5 times higher than the industry average.

No one was more sensitive to time than Atlas. Typically when a customer calls to request a door they might have to wait as long as a week for a response. Atlas automated its order system linking engineering, pricing, and scheduling. Now 80% of order inquires can be answered while the customer is on the phone. The factory machines were upgraded to reduce changeover times along with a custom system to track the parts in production so they arrive at the shipping docks at the same time. While competitors were saying their customers will wait for their doors, Atlas was busy stealing them away.

But if machine setup times and supply chains plague manufacturing than group organization and workflows plague the software industry. For example, many software shops struggle to fix customer bugs in a timely manner. It may take 15 weeks to deliver a door but it can take years to deliver a requested bug fix. So few organizations have solved it that many just expect to lose a certain percentage of customers due to unresponsiveness.

The truth is more complicated. Most organizations are set up in vast pyramids with each group reporting to the group above it. Communications between groups is minimal at best. Some reported bugs simply never get routed to the proper group and the ones that do may not get prioritized and scheduled correctly. Worse, some bugs need collaboration from multiple groups to fix.

Beyond the communication issues lies process problems. Most companies incorrectly try to fix problems by working a new process into the existing organization rather than reorganizing the people to work around the new process. In Competing Against Time they introduce the concept of closed-loop teams. A closed-loop team includes everyone needed to handle a process. In banks instead of passing the loan application through different departments with different processes and lead times, one group is formed including credit analysis, asset appraisal, and senior bankers for fast response times. All the decisions for the approval of a loan can be done in one small effective group instead of three uncommunicative ones.

No where have I seen the concept of closed-loop teams applied better in the software industry than at National Instruments. So important is fixing customer issues fast that they staff actual engineers, called application engineers, on the front lines. When a customer calls in with an issue they won’t be speaking to a generic customer service representative but to an actual engineer who can usually solve their issue on the spot. Putting engineers on the front lines costs money but the fast customer turnaround creates loyalty and willingness to pay more for products.

As vertical software segments mature and competing software packages converge to the same features, competing on time may be the only way to differentiate yourself. Customers might not tell you they value time but make it a priority and you will be rewarded.

Walk into any nice golf course in Las Vegas and upon paying for your round you will be asked one question: whether you are a local resident. What seems like a simple question has great impact on how much you pay.

Most golf courses know that local golfers are a bunch of price sensitive whiners. Increase the price of a golf round too much and they will disappear. Decrease it and they will play more. You couldn’t pick a better demonstration of how prices influence demand. Although most golf courses have only local customers, Las Vegas courses have an additional visitor: the tourist.

While the locals are price sensitive the tourists are not. They have come long distances to play golf and asking them to pay more will not derail their objective. If the locals are a bunch of price sensitive whiners the golfing tourist is a price insensitive high roller.

Golf courses have realized this long ago. Why charge only one price? Unlike most things in life, they can have the best of both worlds by charging locals one price and tourists a much higher price. So different are the prices that tourists commonly pay hundreds of dollars more. Still, they enjoy their experience while golf courses enjoy the higher profits.

Golf courses may price discriminate against tourists but Amazon—in their early days—tried charging different prices for the same book. Through the use of internet browser cookies, they tracked how much you were willing to spend for a book. As good as the profits where for Amazon‘s bottom line, it turns out that while customers tolerate group pricing like senior or student discounts they don’t like hearing their neighbor paid less for the exact same book ordered on the same day. Amazon has since reversed course and charges the same amount for the same book—at least we think they do.

Coffee shops identify those that can afford to pay more not by charging different prices for the same cup of coffee but by charging different prices for nearly identical cups of coffee. It cost next to nothing to add whip cream or chocolate and those that are less price sensitive usually opt for the more luxurious cups. Coffee shops make more money by having a fuller menu than by having just one type of coffee with one price.

Like the coffee business, the tech business offers different tiers of products. IBM’s LasterWriter E—a low end laser printer—had the exact parts as the high end LaserWriter model except it had a special chip to slow it down intentionally. While nothing drives engineers more crazy than watering down an existing product, having two products prevents those that can afford to spend more from buying the cheaper version. By having two products, the rich will always buy the more expensive fully featured version. Short of asking their net worth, nothing is more effective at smoking out the rich.

Printers are just the beginning. Intel designs different speeds of processors from the same chip design. Microsoft offers its operating systems in home and professional versions. Much to their delight, most businesses buy the more expensive professional version.

From the food business to the tech business, the game is getting those that can afford to pay more to do so. Next time you see different priced items ask yourself, will I pay more? The businesses certainly are.

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, better known for their hippy ways than their ability to win fights, unexpectedly found themselves in the ring with a heavy weight called Pillsbury. There was no bigger opponent.

Pillsbury in 1984 was a 4 billion dollar conglomerate who acquired Haagen-Dazs for 80 million in 1983 from the feisty founder Reuben Mattus. Haagen-Dazs could be found in every supermarket and controlled 20% of the ice cream market. Ben and Jerry’s in contrast had only conquered the small towns of Vermont, and had just recently launched into the Boston market.

Despite their small size, they caught the attention of the Haagen-Dazs executives when their products started showing up on the shelves of Boston’s supermarkets. Even more concerning to them was they were selling. Paul Tosi, who ran Paul’s Distributors and owned the Ben and Jerry’s distribution contract for Boston, was stunned in March 1984 when the inquires of Jim Richards, a Haagen-Dazs sales manager, turned into a nasty ultimatum. Stop distributing Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or lose the right to sell Haagen-Dazs.

The threat was real. Grocers usually only worked with one distributor for their frozen desserts to reduce traffic to their stores and billing headaches. Grocers wanted Haagen-Dazs and if Paul couldn’t supply it, they would work with another distributor. If Pillsbury and Haagen-Dazs intended on throwing the first punch, they wanted to make sure it landed.

Ben and Jerry, not known for their athletic prowess, felt it. Despite being better known for peace and love, they knew they could win a court battle but they also knew a long court battle would only favor Pillsbury. They understood that if they were in the courts, their products wouldn’t be on the shelves. While Pillsbury was focusing on the ensuing street fight, Ben and Jerry decided instead to focus on the minds of the customers.

In an ingenious maneuver—instead of playing defense like most companies—Ben and Jerry went on the offensive. They reasoned that if the customers of both Haagen-Dazs or Ben and Jerry’s knew what Pillsbury was doing, things would work in their favor. Pillsbury may own the courts but Ben and Jerry would own the media.

They came up with a campaign around the phrase: “What’s the Doughboy afraid of?” They issued a press release stating they were no threat to Pillsbury’s business. Jerry himself flew to Minneapolis and picketed in front of Pillsbury’s world head-quarters with a sign “What’s the Doughboy afraid of” and pamphlets explaining the story of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. They said: “Do you think the Doughboy is afraid of two guys working with twenty-three people in four thousand square feet of rented space? Do you think the Doughboy is afraid he’s only going to make 185.3 million in profits this year instead of 185.4 million. Do you think that maybe the Doughboy is afraid of the American Dream? We only want to make our ice cream in Vermont and let the people of Boston make their choice in the supermarket. Next time you’re in your local market, pick up a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and give it a taste. Because that’s what the Doughboy is really afraid of.”

On the back of the flyer was a coupon for a write-in kit that included letters of protest to the FTC and William Spoor, the chairman of the board at Pillsbury. The persistent could also get a t-shirt. They not only attacked in Minneapolis but in Boston as well where billboards on highways, buses, and even airplanes made appearances.

Worse than the billboards and signs for Pillsbury was its effect on their public image. The media attention was trashing it. Pillsbury caved and the final agreement was signed on March 6, 1985, only a year after it started, removing the threat. What would have squashed any other company didn’t squash Ben and Jerry. By controlling the message not only did they save their company but they created publicity worth millions that typically takes companies years to establish.

If Ben and Jerry taught us anything, it’s that the real battle is not about the products but about how people perceive them. Ben and Jerry established Pillsbury as the big evil corporation trying to crush the little guy. They were in control of the message and winning the ground war.

Too many companies forget to play offense allowing others to control their message. When this happens they spend most of their time responding to the claims of their competitors towards them. Like an army under attack, they run around the field doing damage control. And like war, which is only won by attacking, businesses only win by attacking. If they don’t establish their message in the minds of their customers others will.

In 1878, Thomas Edison become interested in the light bulb. During the time open arch lights—strong electrical currents that jump the gap between two carbon rods—were starting to light the streets of France. The holy grail of lighting, however, remained the incandescent bulb containing a thin metal element encased in a glass bulb. After decades of experimentation by William E. Sawyer, Joseph W. Swan and others before them only poor results where obtained.

But Edison wasn’t like most inventors. He was no theorist instead favoring experiments to fancy equations. When a bright mathematician named Francis R. Upton came to work at Menlo Park to assist Edison in his light bulb adventure, Edison assigned him the task of calculating the volume of a pear shaped glass bulb. Upton carefully drew the exact shape on paper but before he could bust out his calculus skills, Edison became inpatient demanding an answer. To prove a point, Edison simply filled the bulb with water and poured the water into a measuring device to achieve the answer instantly.

Edison wasn’t always so brash but he demanded hard work. People who applied to work at Menlo Park always wanted to know two things: what was the pay and the hours. Edison's common response: “We don’t pay anything, and we work all the time.” Edison wasn’t joking. He worked around the clock taking only small cat naps. When others tired at the lab, he could be seen at his desk meticulously recording the results of his experiments.

And with that work ethic and Menlo Park's sizable lab, Edison publicly announced he would do what others couldn’t: make an incandescent bulb. Despite Edison’s track record of success, many in the academic community scoffed at his boastfulness considering the task too complicated for an experimenter with no formal education. Influential investors in New York felt otherwise and financed Edison creating the Edison Electric Light Company.

The investors made a good bet. No one in the world had more experience working with electric circuits than Edison. His knowledge convinced him of the importance of parallel circuits to subdivide the current to many bulbs but it was his realization that a high resistant lamp was needed instead of the low resistant lamp others were trying that pushed him on the right track.

But the real obstacle was finding an element that could glow brightly with enough resistance and wouldn’t burn out—something that eluded others for more than a generation. Carbon, Platinum, Boron, Chromium, and virtually every type of metal was tested with each substance carefully measured for endurance and resistance. He also experimented with different types of gases in the bulb all the while trying to get a better air tight vacuum. The dizzying amount of experimentations and failures would have overwhelmed others but still he plowed on.

Edison, who often said “If you come across anything you don’t thoroughly understand don’t rest until you run it down”, was running down many things he didn’t understand. But by taking careful measurements he was able to compare results which allowed him to eliminate possible elements. Platinum, for example, which others had experimented with extensively and brought some success in his experiments was abandoned.

During his experiments in late October 1879, Carbon was combined with tar and tried with surprising results. Later a cotton thread was carbonized and lasted 40 hours before burning out. On the right track, Edison tried other vegetable fiber materials like fishline, flax, cocoanut shell, hickory, twine, and cedar shavings. Nothing was left off limits. Even human hair was used. The winner was simple Bristol cardboard that lasted 170 hours. Eventually, however, bamboo was used in the bulbs and last 1200 hours. Edison would go on to light up entire neighborhoods in New York and the tiny Edison Electric Light Company would turn into General Electric.

What separated Edison from other inventors was not his genius smarts but his relentless dedication to his work. Edison himself understood this when he exclaimed: “The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want!” Not only did he work hard but he was continually learning. When he wasn’t experimenting, he had his head buried in a book or technical journal.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that outliers in a field are not geniuses but rather overly dedicated individuals. Few would argue that Edison wasn’t an outlier but Gladwell would just say he was more dedicated. Edison, who made his own telegraph at age 15, was simply able to get more practice in before others his age.

Gladwell in his book introduces the notion that ten thousand hours of practice is needed before anyone can become great at a profession. He sites a study of young violinists all starting out at the age of 5. He begins:

“In those first few years, everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two or three hours a week. But when the students were around the age of eight, real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicing—that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better—well over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice.”

He continues:

“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any 'naturals', musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works.”

Too many people think that those at the top are naturally gifted and talent alone got them there. Gladwell’s insight not only dents that thinking, it squashes it altogether. Anyone, no matter how stupid they may seem, can become an outlier if they work hard.

When I started my first job, I worked under Elton Wells an amazing Software Engineer. He was shockingly productive, thought of good designs, squashed bugs like an overzealous exterminator, and flat out got things done. Even more important than any natural talent Elton possessed was he simply out worked you.

You see most Software Engineers go to work do their thing for the minimum eight hours and then go home and do nothing more. The more I studied Elton, the more I came to understand he didn’t do that. He read MSDN articles, technical books, and coded on the weekends. While other programmers were trying to avoid anything related to their profession after hours, he was actively strumming his violin.

Through Elton, I learned that successful programmers continually learn and practice just like Edison. As I have progressed through the software world, that has become more apparent. Practice is not something you do once you become great but rather practice is something you do to become great. After all it was Edison who first said: “Genius is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration.”

Jones Beach, just 25 miles from Times Square on the southern end of Long Island, serves 6 million visitors a year. So beautiful are the white sands that on a summer day one might think they are closer to Jamaica than New York City. While considered one of the best beaches in the world, it was only sunken marsh land in 1922 when Robert Moses first laid eyes on the property.

The township of Hempstead would have liked to keep it that way. They were intent on pulling oysters from the bottom of the bay rather than drunken New Yorkers. As Parks Commissioner, Robert Moses could buy, condemn or appropriate land owned by private individuals but land owned by townships could only be acquired through town votes. The votes were not forthcoming.

Part of the reason was Moses himself. He would not reveal the actual route of his Meadowbrook Causeway upon which thousands of vehicles would travel. Knowledge of future road plans were greatly coveted because, if known before hand, land could be acquired at pre-parkway prices. No doubt as demand for stores and homes close to the parkway increased, land prices would follow shortly behind.

If buying land was coveted, building contracts were more so and no one loved them more than Nassau County GOP leader G. Wilbur Doughty. A corrupt old school boss with close connections to construction companies in the county, he ran a tight ship. Many citizens owed their livelihood to the construction jobs those companies produced. What Doughty said was law and Doughty wanted nothing to do with the plans of Moses.

The idealist Robert Moses fresh out of Yale and Oxford scoffed at back door dealing. Even the Robert Moses of 1925 tried many times to persuade Hempstead Township to give him Jones Beach. Doughty even went so far as to place the proposition on the ballot in November 1925 but the vote was 12,106 to 4,200 against.

In those dark hours, Moses thought he had lost Jones beach and with it his elaborate park plans for Long Island. Whether someone convinced him to deal or he thought of it himself we don’t know, but later in the year we find Moses in private meetings with Doughty. Of course, no contract or proof of any deal surfaced but certain things were agreed to. Among them were contracts for the construction companies connected to Doughty along with Hempstead Township having full access to the plans for the Meadowbrook Causeway.

In November 1926 the proposal passed 18,872 to 5,076 in favor. The park would be built after all and Doughty would be the first to spread his beach towel upon the white sand.

Lucky for Moses he learned to compromise early in his career. He went on to build many of the bridges and roads in New York City. For a man with strong opinions, Moses knew when to compromise in order to get things done. No doubt, the lessons of Jones Beach often played out in his mind.

The lessons of compromise are not limited to beaches. In the book Making it Big in Software it talks about the idea of an emotional cache. An emotional cache is the amount people feel invested in your ideas. Including ideas of others in architecture decisions or proposals while acknowledging their contributions helps build support. The further you advance in your career the more your success depends on the ability of the team to get things done.

Unfortunately many programmers, to their detriment, are often uncompromising on technical matters all the while alienating teammates. It is often said that what matters is not how much you know but how much you do. Individually, you can only accomplish so much. The great leaders who get things done know how to give in order to get.

For all the theories explaining the stock market not one has gained more traction than the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Coming to prominence in the 1960s the theory states that given many intelligent individuals with equal access to information, stocks that are underpriced will be bought and stocks that are overpriced will be sold thus creating accurately priced stocks.

Nothing sums up the theory better than a conversation between a professor and his student. Upon the student noticing a ten dollar bill on the ground the professor quickly denied it stating it was impossible because if it were really a ten dollar bill someone would have picked it up already.

But if the group philosophy helps the theory it also hurts it. The thing with groups is they sometimes behave like herds and go trampling off in the weeds. No one can say that markets had assets priced correctly during the end of the 1920s or during the top of the dot com boom. Yahoo, for example, was priced at $237 on January 2000 but only $11 dollars a little over a year later.

And it wasn’t like Yahoo’s earnings changed drastically during that time. Instead, the herd mentality took over and a bubble formed. Eventually someone noticed they couldn’t see out of the head tall weeds and the sell off began. If markets were run by robots, the Efficient Market Hypothesis would be well efficient.

But markets are not run by machines but humans complete with greed, pride, and the competitiveness to beat their neighbor into submission. It can be shown that markets are rarely priced perfectly but instead follow a pattern similar to a clock pendulum in that most of the time they are either to the left or right of the correct price. It is like listening to your sister recall her last date. Either things are going really well or they are going terribly. People tend to think the same way about stocks.

Boone T. Pickens was never one to follow the crowd. Having successfully created Mesa Petroleum and then taking it public, he became fascinated with the relationship between oil company’s stock prices and the underlying values of the oil and gas reserves it owned. In 1969, his mind perked when he noticed that Hugoton Production—a larger company with extensive gas reserves in southwestern Kansas—had a stock price much lower than what the gas reserves it owned would fetch if sold. He launched a hostile takeover of Hugoton and merged it into Mesa creating an even more powerful independent oil company.

Pickens didn’t forget about Hugoton. In the early 1980s, he again noticed that oil company validations were not priced correctly. He moved quickly targeting Cities Services which was three times the size of his company but its stock was priced at only a third of what its oil and gas reserves where worth. Mesa acquired blocks of stock in Cities Services and though it lost the battle for the company it made a 30 million dollar profit on its shares. Further profits of 500 million were made in much the same way with Gulf Oil in 1983 when their stock went from $41 a share to $80 a share.

If there is one thing Pickens proved it’s that real money can be made by those who take undervalued assets and make them valuable. And like undervalued companies, big money can be made by employees who take undervalued projects and make them successful.

In sports, for example, coaches rise to fame not because they took a winning team and kept them winning but because they took a bad team and changed them into a winning team. There is very little prestige initially coaching for a bad team but turn it around and people notice. Make no mistake, the quickest career advancements happen because of the ability to turn undervalued assets into valued ones.

People in their career tend to make the same mistakes as people who buy stocks that are pitched by CNBC. They buy the stocks expecting big returns but by the time the market has realized the true value of the company the big returns have already materialized. The people who invested before CNBC made the stock newsworthy are the ones truly rewarded.

Likewise, joining a company that has already hit it big greatly decreases your potential to hit it big. People who join these companies expecting to make big gains will be disappointed. The hard work of turning the undervalued products into valued products has already been done and the employees who did the work have already been rewarded.

Let’s be clear, there is nothing wrong with joining a successful company. It is just like investing in index funds. With index funds, you are guaranteed to get an average return. Just don’t expect to beat the market.

When Alexander Fleming returned to work from an August vacation in 1928, he began the monotonous task of going through his staphylococci cultures—bacteria that cause boils, sore throats, and abscesses—housed in Petri dishes. While examining each dish he noticed something unusual. One culture was contaminated with a mold, which by itself isn’t that unusual, but around this mold the colonies of staphylococci that surrounded it were killed.

Realizing the unique properties of the mold, he spent weeks growing mold trying to determine the type. After consulting with a Mycologist, they determined the type to be a rare strain of Penicillium notatum. Fleming named it penicillin.

The interesting part of the story is not the discovery of the disease killing mold but Fleming’s curiosity and desire to learn more. Of all the qualities a scientists needs, nothing is more critical than curiosity peppered with desire. Other scientists might have seen the same mold phenomena but their lack of curiosity prevented them from moving forward.

Fresh out of college, I started my career at National Instruments. Among all the employees that walked through the doors of the Mopac C building, none had a greater influence on the software direction of the company than Jeff Kodosky. He invented the software language LabVIEW that powers everything National Instruments does.

I sat close to him for a couple of months and among his duties was to take pictures with campus visitors. When visitors weren’t clambering to see him, he would take trips to various places. After he returned, he often sent an email attaching the photos from his latest adventure. More interesting than the pictures, however, was the quote seen at the bottom of all his emails. It said something to the affect of: “Great discoveries are started by saying ‘that is weird'.”

What Kodosky understands is that every discovery is made by first observing something acting differently than what we expect. More importantly, he understands that programmers make discoveries because the software doesn’t act correctly. Programmers are computer scientists after all, and the effective ones are curious about odd behavior. Kodosky expects this quality from the hundreds of programmers hired to work under him.

Great programmers are like Fleming in that when they see a program behave in ways they don’t expect the curiosity overwhelms them and they can’t help but relentlessly track down why that is. In the process they kill bugs that plague the product and produce higher quality features. Make no mistake, these types are the ones that keep the toilets flushing and are the foundation for stable products.

As important as these types are, the real problems occur from programmers who overlook the mold in the Petri dish rationalizing odd behavior away as chance occurrences not worth their time. As behavior is overlooked, the defects sink deep into the software like two week old Chinese food making its way through your digestive tract. Every good software manager knows the longer a bug remains in the system the harder and more costly it is to fix.

Even more frustrating is trying to tell what type a potential hire is during an interview. Like a heard of wilder beasts, programmers all look the same but after a couple of chases by hungry lions the weak ones become apparent. But unlike wilder beasts, where strength and skill are paramount and curiosity gets you eaten, curiosity must be one of the top things you look for. New frameworks and languages can be taught. Curiosity and drive cannot.