Years ago at Borland. My first real gig. I was poached from an internship into a full-time QA gig. When I accepted the offer, they sent me a box of Borland schwag, t-shirts, notebooks, and pens. I was elated. No more hourly wages, I was full-time. Six months in, my manager sat me down at… more
Back in the early 90s, Borland International was the place to be an engineer. Coming off the purchase of Ashton-Tate, Borland was the third largest software company, but, more importantly, it was a legitimate competitor to Microsoft. Philippe Kahn, the CEO at the time, was fond of motorcycles, saxophones, and brash statements at all-hands meetings:… more
There’s a very short list of new manager “must do’s” in the Rands Management Rule Book. The brevity of this list comes from the fact that a must is an absolute and when it comes to people, there are very few absolutes. A clever way to manage one person is a disaster when applied to… more
There is a long-standing perk for working at high tech companies. If there is a nerd-relevant movie coming out, it is the obligation of management to get a sneak preview for the engineering team. An opening day morning showing works, but has significantly less morale impact than the sneak preview earlier in the week as… more
The whispers in the valley and in the weblog-o-sphere is the hint that we’re in the early technology bubble similar to the Internet nuttiness of the late nineties. The ideas sound familiar: – Those VCs sure are investing a lot of money in start-ups! – It’s sure getting harder to hire! – Everyone I know… more
The list of reasons folks want to become a manager is varied. I think it looks like this: I want to have more influence over product development. I wanted to try something new and I get along with people. I’m never going to be a great programmer, but I sure know what programmers are talking… more
There’s a Screwed Scenario that I missed. Back in my Borland days, we were working hard on Paradox for Windows. I was a QA engineer testing the database creation and modification functionality. My counterpart in engineering, Jerry, was working hard, but getting absolutely nowhere. We were mid-to-late in a 1.0 product cycle and most of… more
A recent Slashdot article about, yet another, start-up founded by Stanford grads got me reminiscing about the good old days when databases where in your face… and… fun? I was a Borland barbarian back in the late 80s and 90s and we had a head full of steam and we had a crazy Frenchman steering… more
Cabel Sasser of Panic dropped a shirt off with me shortly before my first presentation at WWDC. For those of you still using Lynx, the shirt reads, “Hi, I make macintosh software.” While Jimmy Eats World was ripping the tunes at the WWDC campus bash, I proudly wore the aforementioned shirt all over the campus.… more
ed: Reading this article in the context of the recent rise and fall of Orkut service might give you the impression I’m pissed at the Orkut folks. Nothing could be further from the truth… I actually wrote this article late last week. Thing is, I don’t think I’m the target demographic for such services (looking… more
