Sunday, December 25, 2011
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/12/14/top-ten-reasons-why-large-companies-fail-to-keep-their-best-talent/
Found this an interesting read...
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Found this an interesting read...
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Friday, December 16, 2011
2011 has continued to be an exceptionally rough year for RIM. The negative press and impressions don't seem to stop.
Everyone is spewing up recommendations to turn RIM around, much of which is speculation without knowing the internals of the company. Large companies are difficult to course correct quickly. I do wish RIM to be successful, aside from being a local company, it is good for the industry to have competition.
I've never seen the numbers, nor have I seen the internal corporate structure. I'm aware the carrier relationships are tricky. Apple has proven their product and can strong arm carriers to distribute. Other manufacturers are not so lucky, and do not have that kind of leverage. But assuming all the logistics I don't understand, do not exist, here is how I would fix RIM. =)
1) Invest heavily and fix the developer experience! This is the foundation of the product, both internally and externally. If RIM is not turning out apps internally because it's expensive to develop, imagine what everyone else thinks! Now-a-days, underdogs are developing the "core" apps internally, such as Facebook, Twitter. If the internal development process is long and expensive, who from the outside will want to invest too?
I've never developed for it, but I'm assuming Playbook must have had a poor developer experience, since even RIM couldn't turn out native email client within their estimated time frames.
2) Stop the device spam. Also, these product numbers and name collisions are overwhelming, and do not convey any clearly useful information and confuse everyone but the most loyal blackberry followers. One would assume a higher number is better or newer, which is not true. One might assume the first digit would signify the device generation, which is not true. One might assume that products with the same name means they would have the same form factor, which is not true. One might assume that each generation there is a single version of a device, like "Bold", which is not true.
Examples:
a) A Storm 9500 is older than a Curve 9380.
b) A Curve 9330 is not better than a 9300, just different.
c) A Curve 9350,9360 has a keyboard but a Curve 9380 is touch only.
d) 9650 is a Bold, 9630 is a Tour and 9670 is a Style Flip Phone??
e) Torch used to mean portrait slider. Now it's ambiguous with a touch only phone.
f) The Bold 9900 is in the same generation as 9790, which was released later.
3) Be realistic. 2011 was the year of dropped promises. From what I'm hearing, it's because internally, red/yellow flags are ignored, pushed back, or not even raised. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but setting false expectations just compounds the issues until they explode.
While management should rightly question timelines, they should not intimidate people into telling them what they want to hear. Similarly, development teams must estimate realistically, independent of market/management pressures for getting things in earlier. And when delays are anticipated, notify early to set expectations right, both internally and in the market.
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Everyone is spewing up recommendations to turn RIM around, much of which is speculation without knowing the internals of the company. Large companies are difficult to course correct quickly. I do wish RIM to be successful, aside from being a local company, it is good for the industry to have competition.
I've never seen the numbers, nor have I seen the internal corporate structure. I'm aware the carrier relationships are tricky. Apple has proven their product and can strong arm carriers to distribute. Other manufacturers are not so lucky, and do not have that kind of leverage. But assuming all the logistics I don't understand, do not exist, here is how I would fix RIM. =)
1) Invest heavily and fix the developer experience! This is the foundation of the product, both internally and externally. If RIM is not turning out apps internally because it's expensive to develop, imagine what everyone else thinks! Now-a-days, underdogs are developing the "core" apps internally, such as Facebook, Twitter. If the internal development process is long and expensive, who from the outside will want to invest too?
I've never developed for it, but I'm assuming Playbook must have had a poor developer experience, since even RIM couldn't turn out native email client within their estimated time frames.
2) Stop the device spam. Also, these product numbers and name collisions are overwhelming, and do not convey any clearly useful information and confuse everyone but the most loyal blackberry followers. One would assume a higher number is better or newer, which is not true. One might assume the first digit would signify the device generation, which is not true. One might assume that products with the same name means they would have the same form factor, which is not true. One might assume that each generation there is a single version of a device, like "Bold", which is not true.
Examples:
a) A Storm 9500 is older than a Curve 9380.
b) A Curve 9330 is not better than a 9300, just different.
c) A Curve 9350,9360 has a keyboard but a Curve 9380 is touch only.
d) 9650 is a Bold, 9630 is a Tour and 9670 is a Style Flip Phone??
e) Torch used to mean portrait slider. Now it's ambiguous with a touch only phone.
f) The Bold 9900 is in the same generation as 9790, which was released later.
3) Be realistic. 2011 was the year of dropped promises. From what I'm hearing, it's because internally, red/yellow flags are ignored, pushed back, or not even raised. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but setting false expectations just compounds the issues until they explode.
While management should rightly question timelines, they should not intimidate people into telling them what they want to hear. Similarly, development teams must estimate realistically, independent of market/management pressures for getting things in earlier. And when delays are anticipated, notify early to set expectations right, both internally and in the market.
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Thursday, November 17, 2011
Productivity and Negative Space
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/11/16/productivity-and-negative-space
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"People who fracture their time putting out fires seem more productive, or at least more responsive, than the people who block out time to think. It’s harder to notice someone not being frantic. Thinkers don’t fare well in environments that reward activity more than accomplishment."
Labels: career, jobs, technology
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Is technology destroying jobs?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/technology-destroying-jobs/
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One thing I got from my ECON 101 Prof, Larry Smith at the University of Waterloo, is that technology will be disruptive, and that's a good thing. We don't want an economy "McJobs". Instead, we want to push for higher efficiencies to increase productivity and increase the resources/quality of life for all.
However, as the above article discusses, perhaps technology is moving so fast at creating efficiencies, we leave out those who cannot contribute, retrain and be productive. If that's the case, as a tech community, what social responsibility do we have to help those being left behind?
Labels: business, economy, jobs, technology
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Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Always ask for code in an interview
Doing tons of interviews. If know anyone looking for a software developer job, send your application my way. That said, be prepared. I run, relatively speaking, tough interviews.
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I am very grateful for a point that was stressed in a past company I worked for: In an interview, always, always, always ask for the candidate to code something from scratch. Even something basic, like reverse a string. Most developers will breeze through this question, and you can move on with the interview. However, occasionally, you will catch the one or two people with good looking resumes, who fail miserably at this high school level task.
I admit, coding on a whiteboard or paper is a bit tricky if you've never done it before. But this task is so straightforward, that you shouldn't need a IDE or notepad to do. Much like 1+1 shouldn't need a calculator, writing a for loop shouldn't need an IDE.
Depending on level, intern, grad, intermediate or senior ask them to write more complicated code. Admittedly, it gets harder with more complex tasks, but good candidates can still fill in the gaps on a whiteboard.
Labels: career, interviews, job applications
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Sunday, November 06, 2011
What time is it?
Time to 'fall back' in time again. Last night I was trying to set my alarm just after 1am. Then I hit an interesting dilemma -- will my Android device auto adjust to daylight savings? If so, I don't need to compensate for the extra hour. Wait -- did it already compensate for the extra hour and not tell me?? When you "fall back" 2am EDT becomes 1am EST. So what time is it now? Did I stay up later than I wanted? Do I set the alarm for 6am? or 7am? Will I miss that precious extra hour of sleep by setting the clock too early? Or set the alarm wrong and not wake up on time??
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... inevitably, I got the alarm settings right, but tossed and turned all night wondering what time it really was and whether or not the device auto adjusted and didn't sleep well at all.
(I did check online to get the real time, but by that time, it didn't settle my anxiety.)
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Saturday, November 05, 2011
League of Legends on job applications?
I've been itching to blog for a while. I'm not entirely sure why. Not sure if I'm going to keep up with it. Not even sure how to organize my thoughts. Let's just see where this goes.
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I've been doing some intern/co-op recruiting and filtering through a whole lot of applications of current college/university students. And I noticed this weird trend -- I'm starting to see a number of students list League of Legends on their resume, mostly in their interest & activities section. However, I saw an application talk about LoL in their cover letter! The letter was quite engaging and entertaining -- he just wanted a breakthrough chance on his first job, and LoL was his best demonstration of his teamwork and leadership abilities.
Sorry, perhaps instead of playing so much LoL, you could write a personal website, Android app, Flash game and talk about how fascinated you are with creating software, rather than just gaming while you wait for your breakthrough chance.
To be clear, I have nothing against playing games, or playing games often; I look at it as a hobby, much like cooking or tennis. Appropriately, it belongs under interest & activities, not your cover letter. I would argue, however, that putting it in has greater risks than benefits given the stereotypes of people who play a lot of video games. But for me at least, I will not treat it as a negative, because I play lots of games myself.
Your cover letter and resume give the first impression to a potential employer, you should leave them with "hard worker", "takes initiative", "smart" or "quick learner". "Hardcore Gamer" is not the impression you want to leave. I'm looking for a software developer, not a chef, tennis player or gamer.
Labels: career, interviews, job applications, resumes
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