mrbgty

imo, the greatest improvement in this process is made when both sides (interviewer and interviewee) realize it's a two way street - a mutually beneficial relationship.

Both sides, pick some problems that NONE of you know the answer to and work through them together. If the interviewer wants to do a group interview, let the person interviewing bring some friends along, too.

tortoise and the hare

The material in this talk doesn't only apply to business. imo, every parent could benefit from considering an angle other than rewards and punishments.

It doesn't matter. There are millions of people getting paid who produce zero or negative value (if that's possible?) their entire lives. Not that they have intentionally done anything wrong. Many people just end up on a path they believe is right but ends up going nowhere (ever hear of CIA agents chasing some guy their entire life only to find out it was all for nothing?). It's necessary for us to advance so don't feel bad. You chose your path. They chose theirs.

Interesting. I thought one of the main advantages of Scrum was to be able to adapt to changing requirements.

From wikipedia: "A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner.As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements."

I don't think he was saying meritocracy equals bad. It's more like he's saying look, here are some effects of meritocracy that we should consider

The execs at HP think that you should run a technology company like you would a WalMart.

They'll get some short term profits with their cost cutting but the revenue is dropping with it.

So they're forced to pay into the unemployment system through taxation but once they need to use some of that money, it's not ok?

Please, if you don't like the system, argue for a different system. You aren't going to change the behavior of these people by putting them down.

Just my opinion but I think your statement is pretty immature. It seems rather that for some reason you want to put them down and I don't believe its because you think it will help them.

Let them be responsible for themselves. It doesn't help you to criticize others.

Thanks, maybe I will pick it up.

Just want to make a point on your last paragraph. I agree but at the same time I don't see any reason why we need to demonize the people who don't know what to do. Whether what they are doing is right or wrong, we're better off not placing blame on them either.

Can you tell us more about this passage?

just my opinion but text is popular because you don't have to make those decisions quickly. it lets you communicate with less exposure.

if you don't know how to reply to a certain statement, you have time to think it over or not reply at all where with voice if you do not reply, the other side will have an easier time pressuring you into it.

Is it safe to assume he will be playing the guitar while driving me around?

So were requirements, design, coding, debugging and testing all crammed into this 90 days?

I'm guessing that system is going to be very difficult to maintain. You need some downtime for designs to settle in your mind and to be sure that it's going to work.

If you're going 24/7 for 90 days, I expect the design to be poor, the code to be hacked/patched, the bug count per loc to be very high and the test coverage to be minimal.

This list is awesome. I would love to work for someone like you.

My experience has been that even when the leader/ceo/whatever decides to cut their own pay in that situation, it is done in some sneaky way that doesn't really result in much loss to their overall pay.

What if a big fan blew air straight into the airplanes wings while it was stationary and those fans were attached to the plane so that they would continue to blow air if the plane gained lift?

"I think it's important to look at costs as investments in the business. And if that investment will not yield a good return, why make it?"

Can't agree more. This was my point.

Look at those costs as investments and not just something you can get rid of to save money. More than likely, it's there for a reason, so please evaluate this expense as something that is likely producing revenue in some form or another.

In other words, you should expect your revenue to fall if you're getting rid of some expense unless you are able to successfully reinvest that expense into something with a higher return.

Why do costs get created in a company? Generally it seems that we create a cost because we think it will result in revenue greater than that cost or because we think that cost will prevent some other larger cost (such as fines from the gov't).

I'm all for efficiency and maximizing the revenue we gain from each expense but we've still gotta realize that when we cut costs, we're losing something that was intended to generate revenue.

I've seen this happen in a large company where they cut a ton of expenses thinking they are going to be profitable (and they are in the very short term) but all those expenses were there for a reason. A few months later, revenue drops like a brick.

"...does the individual not have a role to play in developing social skills and physical health to avoid being ostracized?"

imo, the individual has a role to be who they want to be.

In other words, his working out, eating healthy, etc., should be because he thinks its a good idea; not because others bullied him into it one way or another.

FTA: "While arrest reports have thankfully gone the way of computers..."

And which category does the author fall into?

Just because you weren't interested in those subjects doesn't mean you can't become interested in them. There are already enough external motivators, such as being forced to be on time and in class or face detention and I believe even eventually jail time.

Basically, the students are already forced to be there.

Stop worrying about how everyone is measuring up against each other and the rest of the world. If you leave out the measuring stick and just focus on teaching and learning, yes there will be people who still don't learn but, imo, its an overall win and not by a small margin.

Or lead to new, possibly more motivating, reasons to work for academic success.

Perhaps teaching will have to change and therefore improve. Maybe instead of spending time memorizing data for fear of a bad grade, students spend time really learning about the subject now that the focus is on the subject rather than the grade.

No, you shouldn't do this.

Balancing in exercise will only help you. You're better off reducing the number of features you create and focusing on your core feature.

While you're exercising, you can think about how to make that core feature even better.

"100 hour work weeks wouldn't have improved our outcome."

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't see any problem with those who want to work 100 hour weeks but do get tired of the false reasons people have for doing it. It isn't because you HAVE to, it's because you WANT to.

"Freedom isn't binary. Everyone has to answer to someone."

The second sentence seems to suggest that freedom IS binary. Or that there is no such thing as freedom?

That dead time isn't necessarily waste. Time to ponder is a good thing.

Does anyone still think it really matters which programming language a developer has experience in?

It didn't take long at all after working full time as a developer to realize that software development is much more comprehensive than simply knowing a language. Shouldn't we all be able to create software in any language after a short ramp up period to learn the new language?

Definitely. The way I read his post, though, it was more to point out that you should get a full night of sleep and if you're bragging about only sleeping a few hours a night to be productive, you're not impressing anybody.

A lot happens while your asleep. It's not just your brain repairing itself, although you'd think this would be important enough. In college, at the end of a few hours of study, I'd have some vague understanding of the material. After a full night of sleep, the next day, the information was sometimes clear as day.

Additionally, I'm convinced that your dreams, whether you remember them or not, influence your consciousness. That great idea you had may be a derivative of some really strange thoughts that went through your head while you were asleep.

The point is that sleeping isn't wasted time. There's really important things going on and the ones sleeping those 30 more days a year are probably going to get more out of their sleep than those staying awake for that time.