Ken_At_EM

Whoops! Fixed it!

I’m really glad to hear this. Building hardware for the real world amplified the power of software incredibly.

PS…we’re hiring firmware engineers to bring hardware to life.

My Project Manager's Response: "Nice rant. Sounds like he works with mystical unicorn teams."

Spending time with my kids and wife.

Polishing my new Electron app which is a data viewer for the time-series data that my companies products produce.

Spinning up another side project with Tauri/Rust as a background data collector service.

What do you mean you have to figure out a strategy without managing them directly? Why are you involved then?

How could the budget possibly be tight if this thing makes $20M a year?

Even at a 5% R&D budget you should be able to hire at-least a couple more devs.

Do you mean to say the whole company makes $20M? If not, what other costs are associated with producing this revenue?

I mean, yeah, that was a huge mistake. They should have left it alone entirely, they would have had so much more money to build the Meta-verse with!

It's because it prints money. Is just a straight money printing machine. Of all the Golden Goose's, it's best to just leave it alone and let it do it's thing.

Anti know-how can be a pretty good teacher as well. 18 months at a terribly run startup showed me all things not to do when I started my own.

I am so dissatisfied with the state of the non-Apple PC world, particularly laptops, that I am tempted to do the insane thing and start a PC company.

I see a bunch of probably unsuccessful knock offs.

I don’t see any out there that indicates they beat the original idea to the market by way of breached NDA or non-compete.

This is all solid advice.

What would make a competitor weak, exactly?

I just don’t understand that point of view.

Why aren’t employees at Apple asking for a piece of their massive cash horde?

If the only thing keeping an employee from asking or demanding they be given some of the companies property is the knowledge that property exists then you probably don’t want them in your company.

What sort of information could cause confusion in the workplace, exactly?

Excluding private HR data obviously.

I agree with you, I only remember, maybe once thinking that “yeah, those guys needed to be in stealth mode, that makes sense”

I think anyone who credits stealth mode with their success probably doesn’t realize they would very likely have also been successful without it.

Please provide examples of “easily copyable technology.”

Putting together a team of competent engineers, developers, etc and having them create something meaningful is hard enough as it is. Trying to copy someone else’s tech doesn’t lower the bar all that much.

What’s another good label for these types of knowledge so that we can avoid the cliche?

Is it as simple as having information and experience?

I have read everything on being a carpenter but I have never practiced, so therefore I am “book smart” when it comes to carpentry?

I guess this doesn’t really cut it because when someone claims their “steet smart” as a way to combat feeling inferior to someone else they have credited as “book smart” what they’re really trying to say is that they have knowledge that’s more useful in different situations? Or more practical situations?

The more I think about this the more it seems like claiming to be “street smart” is just saying “hey, I’m smart too, just in a different way” when you’re feeling a bit less than someone.

My experience has been that there are employees who don’t really want to understand the big picture and just focus on their work.

I have never seen transparency hurt the productivity of these employees. They know they can look and see the big picture any time, they just don’t bother to look:

We have plenty of money in the bank and our company is profitable. I’ve employed over 100 people during our 13 years of business. Not once have I ever had an employee say “hey man, I noticed you guys have more than the bare minimum level of working capital in the bank! How about you give me some?” Never.

If you were telling everyone you were broke, asking them to believe in the mission and endure low pay for the cause, and then it leaks out that you have plenty of cash, then yeah, I can see this question coming up.

Couldn’t disagree with you more.

Yeah, I’d agree with you and say absolutely not.

I have never had anyone become negatively confused by our transparency.

They ask for clarification, you provide it, and they are that much more effective.

We have a company scorecard that shows sales funnels, bookings, production numbers, cash and collections info, etc, all completely open to any employee at the company.

A soldering technician on our team can literally see how we’re doing on cash and collections at any time.

We have company-wide updates 2-4 times a month where we brief all employees on important ongoings for 30 minutes.

Not investing into your people is a sure fire way to be ineffective and signal to people that they’re not worth training and should leave. Couldn’t agree more with you.

I have made the claim in support of transparency before that it matters little if even my competitor would be able to get ahold of my road map as an extreme example of transparency. My forecast is that sure, they might zig or zag a bit differently but the reality is that their road map is already full of the things that they need to build next as well as their best ideas. They are my competitor, and generally they are going to consider their ideas superior to my own, so why would you expect them to change and copy my road map?

Share it all. Complete transparency. Show them the cash flow.

At your small size you will benefit from the additional trust and alignment this will bring. You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed.

You can be super secretive to combat the BigCo mentality like Apple when you have the first class problem of being a BigCo.

Every time I hear someone bring up the “book smart” versus “street smart” false dichotomy it often comes off as someone trying to justify their own inadequacies.

I am not calling out the previous reply.

I would be less passionate in someone else's company than my own. However, I could do it passionately for a company that I believe in.

I don't understand your point. Isn't there a massive chunk of people who are passionate about "software development and electronics" that make a living off of it?

I don’t know what a typical creative passion is.

I am into product development, particularly products that are what I would call “full stack.”

Electronics, firmware, software, and web stack all developed for the product.

If you’re young, take all your chances in your 20s. I started my company when was 23 and it’s provided for me ever since.

I’m in my 30s now and if I had waited until I settled down and had kids I would have been very tempted to make the “safe choice” and missed out on my dream of entrepreneurship.

Atleast, until the kids were out of the house anyways.

Life is too short for advice like this, it really is.

Then again I’ve rarely had the discipline to stay put and make a short term sacrifice for long term gain when it comes to my daily work.

It is critically important to me to be fulfilled daily in my work and explore my ideas and passions.

To me, even if I was never financially well off, but I got to pursue my passions and creativity, that would be a life well spent.

Remember, the journey is the reward, not the end.

Disclaimer: I am a college drop out, couldn’t even be patient long enough for that.