In your career as a geek, there’s a list of essential career intangibles. These are the things you need to do in order to be successful, which are also maddeningly difficult to measure. There is no direct correlation between completing these activities and a raise. It’s unlikely that accomplishing these indefinite tasks will end up… more
At the end of each fiscal year, companies take stock of their performance. How’d we do? Better or worse? This is a natural time to reflect upon individual performance — this is when your boss writes your review. In my ideal management world, a review is simply a documentation of well-known facts, your performance over… more
This creepy incident involving Amazon remotely removing purchased content from the Kindle has me back on the fence regarding purchasing one. There are contradictory forces at work here. First, as a geek, I’m unable to sleep when I do not own the latest cool. The first Kindle’s industrial design was intriguing, but the second version nailed… more
In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means. Every group in the company has their own unique set of words and every group uses these words to verbally define who they are,… more
Everyone is an adjustment. When you’re interacting with anyone, you leave the core you and become slightly them. This is not a betrayal of who you are, this is the middle ground we define between any two people. It’s a place of compromise so we can communicate. There are those people with whom this is… more
I admit it. I love it when the sky is falling. There is no more delicious a state of being than the imminent threat of disaster. During these times, I’ve done great work. I’ve taken teams from “We’re fucked” to “We made it”. Yeah, we had to cancel Christmas that one time and there was… more
It had all the signs of a good meeting. And I hate meetings. We were: Talking about a product we loved In great shape from a feature, quality, and schedule standpoint A group that historically did not kick ass A group that was kicking ass. The slides looked great and the dry-run was flawless, so… more
Big couple of weeks for Twitter. Biz was on Colbert. Ashton got a million followers and bought a bunch of mosquito nets. Oprah showed up sans shift key. Twitter seems to be on the front page of everything but, curiously, has done nothing functionally interesting. They’re just sitting there keeping the lights on. Not everyone… more
You’ve taken some hits. Being taken apart by the execs because they could smell you weren’t prepared. The slide deck you loved that the audience ignored. That guy… snoring. In the front row. However, you’ve also hit it out of the park. The unexpected standing ovation. That seven-slide deck that turned into an hour of… more
“Can I work remote?” I cringe. It’s Ian and Ian is a senior engineer. He’s a rock. He gets it done. I never have to ask him twice and, after six years, Ian has every right to ask to work remote. But I’m still freaked because my first thought when anyone asks to work remote… more