Tag: Corporate Life
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Weekly Status
People are creatures of habit, and effective work is produced by grooming useful habits. Here’s a quick write up of a useful habit: the weekly status report. I haven’t always written these, and I haven’t always worked for people who’ve wanted to receive them, but I’ve been at my most…
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Disrupting Ourselves
Let’s talk about some received wisdom: “disrupt your own market before someone else does it to you”. Sensible advice: complacency can kill. Except disruption is generally a pioneering activity, and the survival rate for pioneers is lower than for copycats. Corporate blindspots being what they are, this style of transition…
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Line Product Management Process
I have some issues with the concept of “automating” or “scaling” product management, which I went into in this blog post — what I haven’t written up is what I do use. This is the process for directly running a product or multiple products; leading a team that runs products has…
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English degree, Tech Career
What is the career value of an English degree in a technology career? I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English Literature, focus on American poetry. My thesis was on Emily Dickinson. I’ve been working in information technology ever since. So I’m biased on this subject. I’m hardly…
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Merger & Acquisition Failures
Sometimes when two companies love each other very much… Companies buy other companies. Maybe it’s to pump marketshare or shut down competition. Sounds like a boring transaction as long as regulators don’t mind. Or maybe it’s to get technology and people. Those are exciting projects, full of hope and dreams.…
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Iron Triangle and release planning
I’m going to rant about the Iron Triangle… you can promise date or features, but not date and features. So, add features to your project, and you’ll lose time. Subtract features, and you’ll probably only maintain time and still just meet your deadline, because work expands to fill the introduced…
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Valuable Jerks
Once upon a time I worked with a developer who was a jerk. His bosses didn’t like him, his colleagues didn’t like him, he wasn’t a team player. He produced though, and his code worked, and he would work all night to fix field-reported issues. Consequently, the field loved him…
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