28 Quotes by Antonio Garcia Martinez

In all my experience in both startups and large companies, including and especially at Facebook, I would always prefer - a hundred times prefer - being subject to the rigors of the market, the fickleness of luck, and the whims of users than to navigate the popularity-contest politics of a large company, surrounded by the mediocre duffers who've succeeded in life through nothing more than guile and appearances.

Together we may arrive at the set of mutually agreed-upon lies called history.

The amnesiac tech press weaves the narrative fallacy around the proceedings, fabricating a make-believe dramatic arc from steely-eyed product ideation to flawless and unhesitating technical execution. What was an improbable bonanza at the hands of the flailing half-blind becomes the inevitable coup of the assured visionary.

I had also noticed that those who most made a big show of believing in Truth were unusually attached to whatever well-groomed pack of lies they held dear.

One of Mark Twain's more uplifting quotes maintains that small people always belittle your ambitions, while the great make you feel that you can be great.

When self-delusion and self-flattery enter the mind-set of a product team and the metrics they judge themselves by, like the first plague rat coming onto a ship, the end is practically preordained.

Mark Zuckerberg is a genius. Not in the Asperger's, autistic way depicted in the very fictional movie 'The Social' Network, the cognitive genius of exceptional ability. That's a modern definition that reduces the original meaning.

If the world really does end, there aren't going to be many places to run.

'Targeting' is polite ads-speak for the data levers that Facebook exposes to advertisers, allowing that predatory lot to dissect the user base - that would be you - like a biology lab frog, drawing and quartering it into various components, and seeing which clicked most on its ads.