The most important people is to pick people who like to write software and who are good at... good developers like working with each other. And they... they reinforce each other's skills.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

Maintaining a consistent platform also helps improve product support - a significant problem in the software industry.

Our leadership [in Microsoft ] has that - "hey, we are the best in certain ways," and so we get the best people. That any kind of positive dynamic is quite good, so I love what's going on there, it's fun.

People are building the software and so having the pieces be such that a single person understands all the tradeoffs and everything that's going on in a piece is extremely valuable. It avoids getting into an experimental mode where you're just trying things out. That never works.

Customers want high quality at low prices and they want it now.