A few months ago, I opined on that hiring not just A-players is a legitimate strategy; the gist was that, for most jobs and business models, "A players" simply were not required for all positions. (and oftentimes, any position) Within the tech community, the cost of time and money in attracting and subsequently...
"Growth hacking" is the hot new software job of 2012. Except that it isn't. Beyond the somewhat forced proclamations by a few bloggers, trying to optimize for growth via combinations of programming, SEO, A/B testing, and anything else that can drive users and traffic isn't some unique insight...
I was listening to the last episode of the This American Life podcast, and they were detailing how a company called Journatic was basically outsourcing newspaper articles to the Philippines. Now, they were previously an under-the-radar content company, but the investigation TAL followed through on has uncovered some major newspapers in partnerships with the company,...
I never caught onto Pandora/Last.fm/Spotify online music craze. A combination of: * a lack of connectivity (commuting on the BART), * quizzical music tastes (with a soft spot for Asian pop), and * a obsessive tendency to listen to the same song on repeat mean that I still keep my core MP3 library synced with...
Designed by engineers. It invokes visions of legacy Windows programs, burdened by buttons and menus and dropdowns consisting of all its features and devoid of aesthetic pretense. It is undeniably and unabashedly functional, yet is barely understandable and nigh unusable save for a handful of memorized workflows. I think most software engineers can relate[1]...
I heard we're in a tech bubble. People have been calling our industry a bubble ever since angels and VCs started putting in a few extra bucks when that entire housing thing turned sour. Well, if the sign of a bubble is simply when optimism trumps pessimism, then all the positive press is...
