“At least buyers of used cars and tract housing can resell them to the next ignorant buyer. Companies are generally stuck with their custom software.

“The free market is socialism for the rich—free markets for the poor and state protection for the rich.

“Consider two countries A and B that trade in two goods. One striking result of the theory of comparative advantage: Even if A is technologically superior to B in producing both goods, one of the two industries in A will go out of business in an atmosphere of free trade.

“Mercantilism is an economic theory that holds that the prosperity of a nation depends upon its supply of capital, and that the global volume of trade is unchangeable.

“In the 1930s Marc Bloch painted a complex and nuanced portrait of medieval society in which feudal relations played but a part. More importantly, he decentered feudalism from analysis of medieval society.

The program of study outlined by Bloch has dominated medieval studies until today. By the 1970s, feudalism had, by and large, disappeared from scholarly discourse, but, paradoxically, not from textbooks or the classroom. It was only a matter of time before someone pointed this out. But medievalists are a conservative lot and continued working as before. This is where Reynolds comes in. Susan Reynolds completes the quiet revolution begun by Marc Bloch.

“I believe in [initially] giving employers just the information they need to determine whether to ask you in for an interview, and no more. Let the rest of the decision take place in the face to face meeting.

“Big companies mass-produce hiring decisions. Perhaps looking through a candidate’s portfolio requires the same kind of mental effort as listening to a customer’s needs when building a house.

“The big companies will seize everyone with IQs off the charts, GPAs through the roof, and all the other obvious traits. So you’re looking for people who are “false negatives” by the standard tests. Hire people with portfolios showing they can get stuff done.

“Can’t we shorten a project plan by looking at the dependencies and starting some releases in parallel with others? Of course we could, but in doing so, we increase project risk. When working on several unrelated pieces of software at the same time, the individual developers may only work on one thing at a time, but the managers and the testers and especially the stake holders who are thinking about functionality and exercising change control are overloaded, so they will make poorer decisions.

“The average home buyer is unable to tell the difference between a good house and a bad house, so they settle for superficial distinctions. Tract houses are designed for the features that all inexperienced clients want to buy, making owners and tract houses interchangeable.

The really important architectural decisions are the ones that address how each client is unique, not what all clients have in common.