&gt; we&#x27;re already drones. If i wanted to be an ant, i&#x27;d join the military.<p>Author is talking about ants as they are (which are really awesome!) rather than ants as a poor metaphor for mindlessness.<p>&gt; lifestyle preferences of the extreme programmer<p>As my job duties have gotten more intense and I&#x27;ve needed to become more productive (I say while arguing on the internet at work...) I&#x27;ve really come to appreciate the utility of preferences. As you need to do more, better, faster, you start figuring out the little things that maximize yourself so that you &#x2F;can&#x2F;.<p>When I see SCRUM &quot;fail&quot; in that productivity goes down, it&#x27;s not that teams produce less, it&#x27;s that they fail to produce what&#x27;s actually valuable. The 10x engineer doesn&#x27;t write 10x the code, they write the code that&#x27;s 10x the value.