Kelly seems to have believed that the desire to impress your boss was a corrosive force, and so new discoveries and inventions were steadily percolated up to him and other leadership layer-by-layer one to two weeks at a time. From his perspective, it wasn't Kelly's job to micromanage people. Yes, they worked for him, but in his model, he wasn't their employer — he was their patron.

Most people treat books like delicate objects. They keep them clean, pristine, and absolutely unmarked. A creased spine feels like a wound. A note in the margin? Unthinkable.

But in 1940, a man named Mortimer Adler said this attitude was nonsense. His short essay entitled How to Mark a Book argued that writing in your books isn’t defacement — it’s a sign of life. The only way to really understand a book is to engage with it, argue with it, and respond to it.

Today, science backs him up. Studies in educational psychology show that annotating a text dramatically improves your retention of its contents. In some cases, readers who engage actively with what they read by marking a book remember up to seven times more than those who don’t.

The game is far more brutal if you're young. A young scientist with their own lab who sets their own research direction is unheard of. When was the last time a 20-something ran a lab at a major university?

People who can survive this system aren't necessarily the same as people who can do great work. Most of the great names of the past would be considered unemployable today

Mervin Kelly understood the golden rule, "How do you manage genius? You don't." And it worked.

I've always pursued my interests without much regard for final value or value to the world. I've spent lots of time on totally useless things.

I don't think I was ever motivated by the notion of winning prizes, although I have a couple of dozen of them in the other room. I was motivated more by curiosity. I was never motivated by the desire for money, financial gain. I wasn't trying to do something big so that I could get a bigger salary.

During WW2, Bell Labs reversed engineered and improved on the British Magnetron within 2 months. Helped create the "Bazooka." Built an electronic computer that semi-autonomously controlled anti-aircraft guns, invented an acoustic homing torpedo, proximity fuzes, echo-ranging SONAR, pulse code modulation, the first anti-aircraft missile (the Nike) and the klystron.

We live in a metrics obsessed culture that is obsessed with narrowly defined productivity. There's too much focus on accountability and too little focus on creativity.

Bell Labs' pantheon was built on the backs of those who can't escape having dark nights of the soul. People who wake up in the middle of the night every night and ask "what am I doing with my life? I've accomplished nothing worthwhile.”

Scientists at the height of their careers spend more time writing grants than doing research. Between 1975 and 2005, the amount of time scientists at top tier universities spent on research declined by 20%. Time spent on paperwork increased by 100%. To quote the study, "experienced secular decline in research time, on the order of 10h per week."

It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964... Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough.

Reportedly, Kelly and others would hand people problems and then check in a few years later.3 Most founders and executives I know balk at this idea. After all, "what's stopping someone from just slacking off?" Kelly would contend that's the wrong question to ask. The right question is, "Why would you expect information theory from someone who needs a babysitter?"