You're forgetting the other half of using the software you created - you still need to maintain it!
919 karma · joined July 14, 2011
The easiest example I've found is comparing a manager to a conductor in an orchestra.
Most people will only see a conductor on the night of the performance, and they don't look like they do much, but a lot of the work is actually done before the night.
The main issue is that because there are so many musicians in an orchestra, it's hard to have an overall view of what everyone's doing and if a piece sounds good.
The main job of the conductor is to be the person who has that big picture. They make sure everyone is playing in time and in key. And if they're tricky parts of the piece - they make sure it's played properly. If it isn't, they hold individual practice sessions to make those parts smoother. If some musicians aren't performing well, they have conversations with them and maybe let them go. If there aren't enough musicians they hire more. And if the pieces aren't working they change them from the millions of pieces available to play. And they have to do it in a way so as not to make the orchestra angry and all quit!
So to answer your question what does Tim Cook actually do? Does he tell his staff the priority is moving xyz units, does he come up with the core strategy, does he pick up good ideas from his staff. The answer is most likely yes to all the above - but that's such a small part of it.
The big thing he needs to do is have a vision for how he wants the business to be, and then do those parts you mentioned, plus the hundreds of other tasks and decisions to get it there.
Many of the decisions seem to be on a whim (despite the public telling him they're bad ideas), and when the consequences of those decisions occur, he reverts those decisions - with an almost obliviousness to the warnings previously given to him ...
I'm curious to know if this is how he's run his previous businesses - and were they successful despite of this style of decision making (or maybe because of this style of decision making?)
Maybe double check the "try another way" login options and maybe one of them will help you get back in.
Good luck!
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 28 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 6%
Data Units Read: 510,433,533 [261 TB]
Data Units Written: 395,139,884 [202 TB]
Host Read Commands: 4,755,060,485
Host Write Commands: 1,317,327,139
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 180
Power On Hours: 944
Unsafe Shutdowns: 9
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
Which seems a lot better than the 18 month average, which was 700GB /day.
Hopefully means it's since been fixed, and I haven't destroyed my SSD too much!
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 27 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 6%
Data Units Read: 509,334,138 [260 TB]
Data Units Written: 394,959,651 [202 TB]
Host Read Commands: 4,719,463,111
Host Write Commands: 1,312,261,606
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 178
Power On Hours: 938
Unsafe Shutdowns: 9
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0I do think scenario #1 is interesting to talk about though.
I.e. If I was that manager receiving that news, I wouldn't outright tell the devs and say "it could be crunch time for the next 6 months", which might cause a panic and devs will start looking for other jobs.
Instead I'd call a meeting with leadership / sales, see what was sold and if there's any flexibility on deliverables with the client. If we need more resource, is it worth finding funding to hire more staff, or maybe postpone another project to get this higher priority one done.
Once that's resolved then I can think about delivering the news. Maybe it's a non issue (e.g. a new team is spun up to handle the project and someone gets a promotion to head the team), maybe it's crunch time (in that case it's time to have a difficult conversation with the team), or maybe the client is flexible on delivery (so it's business as usual).
Again, I could see how some managers would be uncomfortable not telling their team everything (and potentially cause unnecessary panic) - but I think that's part of management, knowing what level of detail your team are happy with, knowing what you can / cannot handle, and knowing how to delivery good / bad news and sometimes having to be the bad guy.
> Transparency is not your job.
> You're job is to keep telling your reports that everything is on track no matter what
> This will 100% require lying or being non-transparent at some point.
To add my 2 cents I kind of agree. When I first got into management, I didn't realise how many fires they were, or priorities I needed to balance. Initially I thought "there shouldn't be this many fires" but I soon realised that that was my job, to put them out, escalate when required, etc all while making sure the ship is steady and doing it with a smile on my face.
Some examples include:
- News that a sales person has sold a huge project which will save the company, but we can't deliver or build with our current backlog / resources
- One key team member has been taking a lot of doctor's appointments recently - and suspect they might be quitting / job hunting
- There's a very obscure security issue which could be fatal if discovered, but is a huge task which will disrupt a project which is already delayed and over budget
If I ran into any of these when I first started I would have freaked out - and that would have disrupt my team as they couldn't be productive with that anxiety over their heads.
Instead I just had to be confident that I could put out those fires, or put in place strategies to mitigate them, and let the team know it's all under control.
Of course if something was too big to handle I'd escalate, or if something blew up I'd take responsibility etc - but I think job #1 in management is to shield the team from distractions and let them do what they're best at doing.
It's on the roadmap though and good to see others have the same idea!
> What I am trying to say is: is there a way for me to see if there are changes I have not seen
Currently I have a red "dot" on the cloud icon in the navbar when it's lost server sync - but there are certain cases where it doesn't show. I do need to spend more time on the multi-user aspect, though it's quite a large piece of work and unfortunately not a lot of users seem to use it.
I also think a hierarchy / folder structure would be super useful. Using it regularly I have an unwieldy large number of sheets and it's difficult to find older ones / search!
As a mitigation I did add row highlighting (if you hover over a var it'll highlight the row it was defined at), but the underlying problem of dynamic sums is still there.
I was working on a TOTAL() function (which someone also mentioned in this thread), but conceptually I also think some of the calcs are better in a tabular format, so have been toying around with designs with tables etc.
It's on the list though but unfortunately due to how integral mathjs is to the app it might not be an easy change to make!
Thanks! This was an intentional design decision on the desktop too so I'm glad someone noticed!
> Are you using OT or CRDTs for real-time editing?
You know this is embarrassing - it's the first time I've heard of those terms and from a quick google I really needed this a few months ago! A lot of the problems described I actually had to battle with and if you try hard enough, you can get the calcs to break state between the users.
I'll definitely dive deeper into this, thanks!
> Are you using any specific cross-desktop platform? (Electron?)
Yeah sure - the app was initially written in React.js for web, and I just did a few modifications to get it deployed via Electron. Tbh the migration was quite straight forward (there were a few design tweaks and UI elements I had to make) but surprisingly the most difficult part was creating the binaries and submitting them to the app stores!
There was also some issue with CORS (due to Electron using local .html file) but managed to find some code to rewrite the headers which fixed it!
I haven't heard of immediate / retained mode before - interesting concept! Figr is more straight forward and evaluates a line as "0" if there's an error (the opposite of "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"!) so they are problems where entire calculations are "wiped out" if there's an error on a line, but I think that's the trade of to having accurate results.
As for a custom text view completely agree! I did do that initially though switched over to draftjs later and (despite it's lack of good guides) has been a huge time saver!
Just out of curiosity, what's the aversion to app stores? I know for paid apps there's a large commission to Apple / Microsoft (I try to download direct when I can) though for free apps I'm a bit more forgiving.
Why Excel? I feel there's a gap between a "desktop calculator" (like the default calculator in most OSes) and Excel.
E.g. Desktop calculators I can say, "calculate tax for a single item", but sometimes I need to calculate tax or multiple sums in a list. You can probably break out Excel at this point - though I feel there's a bit of inertia in this. I.e. Thinking of how to structure the sheet, where to put values / formulas / etc.
I feel with a notepad calculator, it's a bit closer to how my brain thinks and I can get simple calcs out quicker. I may be biased too, but I find it easier to read my results the next time I load the sheet in Figr vs Excel.
Btw I'm not saying this is an Excel replacement - there's always going to be a place for that, though I think this is a nice middle ground.
I think it should be quite straight forward but it's more the deployment and maintenance I'm conscious of.
Mac and Windows (to an extent) both have app stores which can handle hosting, auto-updates, etc, though for Linux I'd have to build a bit of that myself. That also complicates platform specific dev / testing / deployment, and as this is a side project I'm conscious of time.
But if there's demand and things go well, I could be persuaded to release on another platform!
RUD = Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
Seems to be popularised by Elon Musk [1] but I managed to find a page which links to evidence [2] going back as far as the 70s.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/16/elon-musk... [2] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-t...
Didn't think about notification though but sounds like a good idea!
I also created a roadmap too in case anyone wants to have a look
The challenge being that this type of app isn't well known, so has been difficult targeting ads / SEO. I'm also finding the usefulness of other notepad calculators being that that they're desktop apps, so I'm investigating creating an Electron desktop app (plus gives the advantage of the App Store as another channel)
In terms of monetisation, most probably a freemium model where a user can create 5 sheets, and if they want more it could be a $5/month product. If it gets in an organisation it could scale but one step at a time ;)
I've also optimised those templates to be indexed as landing pages so if there's enough traffic, advertising could be another option.
Finally, has been in the back of my mind but potentially trying to hit the education market, though I'm not really familiar in the space so that's a bit further down the list.
It's a little hard to explain but I've got some examples which are hopefully relevant to the community
- https://www.figr.app/s/RUNWAY - An example to work out your burn rate / runway - https://www.figr.app/s/LTVCAC - An LTV/CAC calculator
Has been a fun project to work on, and a great way to see where modern web stacks are currently at. Of course opened to feedback, whether it be technical or product related.
Thanks!
Notable quotes such as:
> It is, unfortunately, one of the chief characteristics of modern business to be always in a hurry. In olden times it was different.
-- The Medical Record, 1884
> If we teach the children how to play and encourage them in their sports ... instead of shutting them in badly ventilated school rooms, the next generation will be more joyous and will be healthier than the present one.
-- Public Opinion: A comprehensive summary of the press throughout the world, Volume 18, 1985
> Our modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine, is the somewhat natural outcome of the banishment of colloquy from the school
-- The Journal of Education, Volume 29, 1907