Quote

The best way to let people go is to let them know when they're hired that it's an uncertain environment and that their job is always at risk and even if you let them go, it's not that you don't love them.

Paul Saffo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Saffo
Age: 54
Essayist
Professor
Paul L. Saffo
Environment
Best
Even
Always
Love
People
Hired
Uncertain
Risk

More quotes by Paul Saffo

Image
Responding to climate change will become the obsession of the next decade in much the same way terrorism was this decade's obsession.
Paul Saffo
Image
I've actually tried not to call myself a futurist for the last 25 years. I prefer forecaster, but people call me a futurist, and it doesn't really bother me.
Paul Saffo
Image
Google was the right set of people at the right time, and they ended up doing the right set of things. It's worth looking at how they are managed. They are network-oriented and allow a lot of flexibility and creativity.
Paul Saffo
Image
I think it is just a matter of time before we have literal ghosts in the machine so you can create an alter ego of yourself that learns from your social experiences and extends a life even if you're no longer in the game or you are no longer alive.
Paul Saffo
Image
I think the most important thing that a company can do, not just in the customer space but the employee space, is to be completely open and completely honest. Don't pretend that you're doing something that you can not do. There's an old saying in Silicon Valley, It's not a bug. It's a feature.
Paul Saffo
Image
We tend to use a new technology to do an old task more efficiently. We pave the cow paths.
Paul Saffo
Image
I'm actually an optimist about what lies ahead. Are wikis reliable? It depends on the specific business. Is Wikipedia reliable? You bet. Wikipedia is a researcher's dream.
Paul Saffo
Image
Each time you toss out a 'singing' greeting card, you are disposing of more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950.
Paul Saffo
Image
I worry about a society that can remember everything.
Paul Saffo
Image
More information and more communications foster world peace and understanding. But connecting extremist nut cases together on the Web - whatever flavor extremism they are - is a really bad thing. More information may not be a good thing, either.
Paul Saffo
Image
My advice is don't use technology primarily to lower costs. Use technology to create new, effective ways of touching the market and creating new businesses and if you do that right, the cost savings will come.
Paul Saffo
Image
Digital technology is the solvent leaching the glue out of all of our traditional institutions.
Paul Saffo
Image
Never mistake a clearer view for a short distance just because the technology looks like it's about to arrive in the very near future. Chances are there will be some surprises and in the long run even the most expected of futures tends to arrive late and in completely unexpected ways.
Paul Saffo
Image
Using technology merely to lower operational costs amounts to standing on a whale fishing for minnows. It just allows you to do the old thing more efficiently, where in this moment of deep transformation, it is much more likely that you should be doing something entirely new in an entirely different way.
Paul Saffo
Image
Sometimes I think we're on this world for three reasons: to be useful, to tell each other stories and to collect stuff. It's the only explanation for eBay. We love to collect stuff, and at least if we're collecting stuff in cyberspace we're not deforesting the Sierra Nevada.
Paul Saffo
Image
You don't want to rely on an expert to tell you what lies ahead.
Paul Saffo
Image
Though I carry enough electronics to get nervous in a lightning storm, I love paper and I always have a Moleskine journal with me to capture notes, conversations and ideas.
Paul Saffo
Image
Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.
Paul Saffo
Image
The Web is a compelling new medium being put to all kinds of uses, by everyone from banks to Cub Scouts to flying saucer cults. That said, it can also be a powerful folly amplifier.
Paul Saffo
Image
Point of view is that quintessentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum... In a world of hyperabundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources...
Paul Saffo