rands

Christopher Mims for Quartz:

All in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and the engine that powers it—Silicon Valley. Innovation was replaced by financial engineering, mergers and acquisitions, and evasion of regulations. Not a single breakthrough product was unveiled…

As I read this, all I kept thinking was Christopher Mims didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas.

Update: here’s a grumpy chaser.

My friend Kevin Simler on Quora:

In other words, the selfishness of neurons incentivizes them to be useful — to hook up with the right network of their fellow neurons, which is itself hooked up with other networks (both ‘up’ and ‘downstream’), all so they can keep earning their share of life-sustaining energy and raw materials.

From Simone Stolzoff on Medium:

According to a recent study by Copyblogger, on average 8/10 people will read headline copy, but only 2/10 will read the rest. We have all become headline hunters.

Been spending a good chunk of the break so far tidying up the archives. Some articles need sub-headings, others need a revised URL, and a few simply had to be deleted. It’s been cathartic.

As I reread articles, I can watch as parts of my leadership religion has changed. I now firmly believe that an engineering lead needs to keep coding. I also see remote workers as an inevitability.

In my bones, I know that teams that stare each other in the face are more productive. Decision cycle-time is shorter because communications are more fluid. There is also inevitably more context gathered when you sit there and see Phil uncomfortably and poorly explain his design. This is discomfort that you’d likely not see in an email.

Is totally remote the future? Nope. But it’s certainly gaining steam.

Via The Onion:

It could be anything—music, writing, drawing, acting, teaching—it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that once you know what you want to do, you dive in a full 10 percent and spend the other 90 torturing yourself because you know damn well that it’s far too late to make a drastic career change, and that you’re stuck on this mind-numbing path for the rest of your life.

As I mention in this talk, I’ve been attempting to write a talk on performance management for years. Each time I start, I realize the complexity of the topic. It’s not a 2000 word essay, it’s a book. It’s also a topic that when executed poorly results in a variety of leadership disasters that while educational are also avoidable.

When the folks at First Round asked if I had any thoughts on the topic, I produced the following talk which is a small step in educating folks on the complexities of dealing with performance issues.

Great crowd, hard topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjczN5_bmnA

Good managers act like servants to their team but far too many like the power and let it go to their heads.

Treehouse removed all their managers back in September – the whole series of posts is worth a read. I am avidly watching the no manager movement. Current thoughts are:

• This type of horizontality only works for certain type of business. Software in particular can support this model because healthy organizations have tools which effectively do the work of managers around communications and knowledge management.
• This type of model does not scale. My opinion is that somewhere around 200+ folks some type of manager/leader/conductor steps up to act in a management capacity. Happy to be proven wrong here.
• In these #NoManager organizations, there are still managers. They don’t have the title, but the instinctively do the work because they’re good at it.

Jessica Olien in Slate:

The study shows that if you have the sneaking suspicion you might not belong, the act of being rejected confirms your interpretation. The effect can liberate creative people from the need to fit in and allow them to pursue their interests.