Mark Esper Quotes

This is the system that we have. I didn’t make the system. This is the system that we have.

People crave predictability, and when you design and use systems, you give people predictability. More importantly, when you build systems, they can help you orchestrate, and orchestration helps you create the habits that continuously improve the systems!

Corporations want stable, reliable, and easy-to-maintain systems.

The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.

There are considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most important.

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

Technologists come at a problem from the point of view that the system is working a certain way, and if I engage in that system and actually change the rules of the system, I can make it work a different way.

If you don't fix latent failures in your system, you're asking for trouble.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

When it comes to professionalism, it makes sense to talk about being professional in IT. Standards are vital so that IT professionals can provide systems that last.

In any technology, one has to be very careful to ensure that it is good and has enough safeguards.

If you've got good systemising skills you can apply them to systems you aren't familiar with, and look for patterns.

When you have large systems, it becomes almost impossible to make even very simple changes.

There is a higher degree of operational excellence and rigor demanded of Stripe than of most companies.

Too often in business, only financial data is gathered - and then it is distributed only to management. Other key indicators that relate to performance areas also need to be tracked. Information on performance has to be made available to those people who can best use it - those doing the work.

I can predict things. I can improve the uptime and the reliability. I can intervene and cause a better outcome before there's a problem.

There are a lot of human-created systems that we like to tout as being logical that are actually riddled with illogic. And then, on the other hand, we have all these natural systems that are not conscious, but they are logical, and they work really well.

Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring.

OM was really sort of at the cutting edge. They have the best quality, the highest performance, the longest list of technology measurements you can gather - so we felt like they were the right partner for us.

DOS is ugly and interferes with users' experience.

Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, may finally be a worthy successor to XP, eliminating the clutter of Vista and letting users get to what they want to use without the fuss. All this, while remaining compatible with their IT departments' demands for scalability and custom implementations.

The federal government spends nearly half a trillion dollars on contracted goods and services; therefore, we must ensure that the money is being spent efficiently, and small businesses have proven that they can do quality work cheaper and often faster.

If we focus on processes, the results will automatically take care of themselves.