brijeshp

Given the torrent of negative sentiments toward LinkedIn when news surfaced of it's precipitous stock decline, this slideshare on the 'art' of PM from a group that is missing the mark in that regard, just doesn't work. This slideshare full of jargon, rhetoric, and banal quotes that are barely interesting, but more importantly, not aligned with the evolution of their own product. HN users hit on so many key points that articulated how and why the product has lost it's luster, and I couldn't flip through this deck without grimacing.

Oh, you want someone honest to work with because of course you're deserving of someone honest. You, like many simpletons before you, have misconstrued the word 'hacker.' While you're on here, do yourself a favor- learn to actually hack code and earn the $30k.

I had a similar issue; here's my recommended approach:

1) Tell everyone (don't single him out) that by the request of a client, you're double-downing on internal security and implementing a set of policies and procedures (P&P) for minimizing risk (I personally used HITRUST as the P&P standard).

2) Part of the P&P entails an audit by the designated Security Officer (in this case, me), in which I personally oversaw the deletion of all production data from every personal and non-personal machine. No one individual suspected I was singling him/her out, as I was doing this across the board, but admittedly, my intention was to go of one individual who had his hands on very sensitive data.

3) Make him and every employee sign-off on the P&P Handbook, in which there's a clear clause that in case any personally identifiable data is on his/her machine, he/she is fully liable for the implications of that data getting leaked. Any such employee will be complicit in any criminal proceedings.

4) Fire him.

Great concept with this tool; I'm sure they have Outlook on the roadmap and that should entice a huge chunk of corporate workers who are locked to Outlook. The application of this concept could be much broader (I'm sure Noteleaf has this in mind)- as a LinkedIn junkie (many of my colleagues are of the same mentality), we find ourselves doing a lot of copying and pasting of names from disparate sources (including e-mail, calendar invites, websites, etc). The ability to pull up aggregated info on an individual by perhaps right clicking and selecting such an option would have massive value. I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with v2+

I agree with most of the other comments here regarding the over-generalization of the $20 million offer.

"Would you sell it for $20 million?" There are so many variables for consideration in answering this question that can result in anything from a symbiotic relationship with a bigger player to augmenting the market using the buyer party's core competencies to just forfeiting the rights to the other party (which is the only viewpoint factored into the author's answer- "find a new idea"). Don't need to necessarily find a new idea as much as be a master of the idea's fate.

Nonetheless, I heartily agree with the last section- mastery of a domain of knowledge. Advice needs to be slapped as a layer on top of hardcore expertise. I've made this mistake in the past of letting the allure of a tech lead me to an area where I didn't have the necessary expertise and idea dissipated quickly. Now I'm focused on an area that my partner and I have deep-seated expertise in and the advice is very easy to cut through to take only the nuggets that apply.

Great post; I've worked independently & in interactive agencies and the biggest challenge I've seen in an agency setting is the cost, time, and effort expended into the evolution of a wireframe prototype from a raw, low-fidelity to a tantalizing, high-fidelity prototype. Problem in agencies is that UX folks are too focused on concrete information architecture-driven design (using legacy techniques) and not on exploring the solution space, and many times lack strategic foresight, rudimentary copywriting skills, and tech acumen. My thought: teach a coder, who thinks strategically, the basics of UX, competitive analysis, and pattern scoping and he will churn out a speedy & exploratory prototype more expeditiously than an agency.