I wrote a piece a long time ago about The Wolf. It’s my personal take on the mythical 10x engineer, except that they aren’t a myth. They exist. I’ve seen them. Many of them. The article was popular. With hindsight, I determined two populations cared about the piece and one who did not. One was… more
The Worry Police worry. During their career, the Worry Police were rewarded amply for their worrying, so they believe it’s their move. It makes them feel important. Worrying. The Worry Police have real power; they are the police. This power was granted to them because sometimes, preparing for imminent disaster is the correct strategy. An… more
Wildfires threatened the Rands home this last week. We’re fine, but there were a couple of sketchy days where we had the go-bag packed and the keepsakes identified. Natural disasters bring folks together rapidly. I’m on a Messages group with a bunch of mountain folk. As word of the fire spread, this message group exploded.… more
Your manager has a default management mantra. You see it when they are not paying attention and a problem – large or small – presents itself. It’s the sound and shape of their first reaction. Their default reaction. And after a few months, everyone knows their mantra. Here are a couple of my least favorite… more
I departed Safari several years ago for performance and stability issues. Too often, I was finding myself in a situation where Safari was wedged or just plain slow. As the majority of my time is spent staring at a browser, this was unacceptable, so I moved to Chrome. Yeah, the typography rendering wasn’t as good,… more
I just finished the pitch letter for the third book. Unlike the prior two books, the next book is primarily based on material never published before. My goal is to finish the third book of the leadership trilogy this summer which means a fall publication. Yeah, we’ll see. Enough about the future, let’s review this… more
DJ and I play Destiny. I’ve never met DJ, but each week he and I and a dozen or so other regulars are sitting on our respective couches, chairs, and bean bags tackling the various parts of this gorgeous first-person shooter. You can play much of Destiny by yourself. There are daily missions on various… more
Me over at TechCrunch:
There’s three models I’ve seen in the last decade. At Apple, engineering and design run the show. Those are the two big things, they’ve got some sort of leadership team but those are the two functions. It seems to be working well. The one I most recently saw is Palantir, which is famously mostly engineers. They run the show. There’s a design component as well, but what do you know about Palantir? What are they up to? They’re doing amazing things and it’s all amazing engineers.
But when you talk about a broad appeal service like us, you want a balance of those three folks. You want the engineers to have the voice of the technology. You want to have the designers who are the voice of the users, that handle the consistency, the beauty and the taste. And you have the product side — and this is a hard side — which is, what is the strategy, how does it all fit together. All the disciplines, technology, taste, strategy are all melded together.
A few weeks ago I spoke at the excellent re:build conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. While it was my first time in Indiana, the setup was familiar. 200+ attendees, great venue, single track, and conference coordinators who know how to put on a great conference. (And one surprisingly gotham-y gorgeous building.) I was the last speaker… more
Hello, New Person. It’s great to meet you. We’ve been waiting awhile for you to come here and now that you’re here, we’re pumped. It’s going to be so much better with you here because we’ve built up impossible expectations in our heads regarding what you can do. Don’t worry – we’re not going to… more
