David Autor Quotes

We can't all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered.

You do not build your own houses, nor make your own garments, nor bake your own bread, simply because you know that if you were to attempt all these things they would all be more or less ill done.

If there's something that someone else can do, let them do it. If I couldn't do it uniquely, let someone else do it and I would get back to the lab.

Concentrate on doing what you do best, and let others do the rest.

We can't all do everything.

Rising living standards - whether in a village, a region, a nation, or the world - depend first on specialization: on letting people concentrate on what they do best and trade with others who specialize in other things.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics - greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

You see and work with many of the same people over and over again; they are all specialists in what they do. I could never do their jobs, and they say they wouldn't know how to start to do a warm-up.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.

If a man can make typewriters better than anyone else, let us, in the name of common sense, keep him on the job of making typewriters.

Division of labor is a justification for sloth.

The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.

Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else.

I had done it all in my career. I always felt, as a kid, that that's what a director needed to be. Hitchcock could do anything in my mind. He's the director. That person has to be the best actor, the best designer, the best cinematographer. Then I came to realize that isn't the case. You just need to surround yourself with the best.

There's not enough said about the beauty of being able to focus on what you do well.

One should do what one is best at on as large a scale as possible.

As the workplace becomes more specialized, from offices to medical centers to factories, teams of people must accomplish their work by collaborating with each other. In my work in filmmaking, we need talented individuals with technical skills, but their abilities to communicate and work with others are just as valuable.

Successful people stick to what they are good at and find ways to make that larger.

To me, it's always a luxury to be able to work with the best of the best because they make it easier for you to do what you do.

Specialization and organization are the basis of human progress.

Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it - I just had to write it... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.

Specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the 'expert' is fooled into accepting a slavery by making him feel that he in turn is a socially and culturally preferred-ergo, highly secure-lifelong position.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

In a collaboration, each author will do 75% of the work.