You’ve had a small number of career-defining moments. These are the select few moments in time when the trajectory of your career changed instantly and drastically. I have two buckets of these: ones I expected and ones that completely blindsided me. While the surprise and subsequent scrambling involved in being blindsided are chock full of… more
Stephen was a hired gun at my first start-up. His contract started a year before I arrived, but he was long gone before I walked in the door. The story goes that when Stephen started, he found a small, solid team of five engineers, a QA lead, and a project manager. They were slowly and… more
Max was a mess. We were on our third mojito at The Basin in Saratoga when it just came pouring out of him. The last 72 hours involved: Two days in Los Angeles babysitting a customer’s data center Four hours of sleep Two huge arguments with his wife on the cell phone A marathon conference… 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
With the completion of the Fez column, I have enough content to start stitching together a book based off my various management essays. Book publishing has never been a stated goal, but based on the response to many of the articles, there’s a good chance folks outside the webosphere might find my management musings of… more
There are a couple of early websites that are just burned into my memory. So much so that I often go to the Internet Archives to see the ancient versions of the sites in their original GOOD LORD WE NEED CSS SOON glory. It’s the same feeling I get when I return to my high… more
