Tag: Leadership
Jason explains why the office isn’t a good place to get work done. He lays out some of the main problems and offers three suggestions to make work, well, work.
"Software has long since lost its glory-days status. We’re not the go-to field anymore. Geeks are no longer revered as gods amongst humanity for our ability to manipulate computers. We get crappy jobs just like everyone else. So, what is it that still motivates you to work as a software developer?" by Lessons of Failure.
"I see people debate this all over the tech sector, and in tech/web groups in other companies. Even back at Microsoft, we used to argue about this all the time, especially whether program managers (e.g. small team level project managers) should know how to code or not. Sadly, no one ever researched whether it had any bearing on their success or not in this role." via Scott Berkun
"When I was younger I thought busy people were more important than everyone else. Otherwise why would they be so busy? I had busy bosses, busy parents, and always I just thought they must have really important things to do." by Scott Berkun.
Workaholism, No time is no excuse, Be a curator, Go to sleep, Who cares what they're doing, Say no by default, Emulate chefs, Pass on great people, The best are everywhere, Put everyone on the front lines, You don't need more hours; you need better hours, ASAP is poison and Inspiration is perishable.
Teams are small, create a frugal culture, innovation comes from the bottom, ...
No one wastes time searching for a purpose at Marissa Mayer's meetings—even five-minute gatherings must have a clear agenda
Top three reasons why VCs were convinced that we would have failed: we did not have a rock star CEO, we were all engineers and we contradicted Gartner.
Mark Suster, "I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, "Just Do It."). I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done..."
"Software engineering is different because only the best people significantly contribute to achievement" by Philip Greenspun.
There is a difference between shy and introverted. Shy means you are uncomfortable interacting with people generally, particularly strangers, whether one-on-one or in a group. Introverted simply means you are more comfortable by yourself or with one other person.
Most entrepreneurs eventually step down and hand their companies over to professional CEOs, often at the insistence of their investors. Mark Zuckerberg hasn't done that.
Obie Fernandez wrote "I think pair programming is one of our most important competitive advantages at Hashrocket. My teams produce some of the highest-quality code I've ever seen in 15 years in the biz."
Ten Crack Commandments list with its underlying message for modern business operators.
Matthew E. May wrote "Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, our ideas-be they designs, strategies, products, performances, or services-must be concrete, complete, and certain. And when it comes to managing a company big or small, we need organizations to be highly ordered, with a strong and well-defined structure. But what if that’s wrong?"
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
Robert Greene and Joost Elffers published the 48 laws of power.
"Ten Things I Have Learned" by Milton Glaser.
When underdogs break the rules by Malcolm Gladwell.
Mark Goldenson listed 10 lessons from a failed startup (e.g. find quick money first, know when to value speed vs. stability).
BusinessWeek.com's annual rundown of the most promising tech startups and the young people, age 30 and under, who set them in motion.
Rands wrote a very interesting essay about the problems related to remote jobs.
Mason Hipp listed 20 useful, thought-provoking, and potentially lucrative sources of news and ideas blogs about entrepreneurs.
Steven McConnell enumerated the classic mistakes in software development.
Paul Graham wrote on his blog "it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them."
Max Kim Tobiasen wrote " For the last decade the people that have had success have primarily been bankers, brokers and other money-pushers. I think the current crisis will mark a big shift in where money and power is centered. It will pass from financial engineers to real engineers. "
Allan Young wrote "The world would be a much better place if less people tried to build startups. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we could use less entrepreneurship."
Daniel Tenner wrote about starting up with a friend "It seems like a fool-proof plan: start up with a close friend. It's not a bad idea, but there are a few caveats that you should be aware of before you proceed".
Aaron Swartz wrote "A better way to think of a manager is as a servant, like an editor or a personal assistant. Everyone wants to be effective; a manager’s job is to do everything they can to make that happen. The ideal manager is someone everyone would want to have."
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time separated into Leadership, Strategy, Sales and Marketing, Rules and Scorekeeping, Management, Biographies, Entrepreneurship, Narratives, Innovation & Creativity, Big Ideas and Takeaways categories.
The fact that IT has become so central to almost all corporations, that any disruption may cost a lot of time and money, which again means that keeping the geeks happy at work is an absolute requirement for a modern business. Happy geeks are effective geeks.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration.