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  • Shared Items – January 10, 2010

    “Improve employees resumes”

      January 10, 2010 – Unfortunately pithy advice sort of loses it’s power when you try to cram 50 of them into a single article but this one struck me as particularly powerful. (Came to my attention via a tweet from @Nivi.)

  • Shared Items – January 9, 2010

    • Kickingbear» Blog Archive » Software Sea Change

      • January 9, 2010 – Interesting thoughts on iPhone app development. Hillariously recalls the hideous stuff we had to see in the 80s from desktop publishing and in the 90s from web publishing before we all collectively got our act together and recognized that the old principles of typography and whitespace indeed still applied.

  • Shared Items – January 5, 2010

  • Shared Items – January 4, 2010

    • Rands In Repose: Wanted

      • January 4, 2010 – A great post on hiring. Just like the author, I’ve let a few great ones slip away. His thoughts on “hiring for your career” are spot on. Your professional relationship with those you hire (or who hire you) is never over.

  • Shared Items – January 3, 2010

    The way these meetings work, from what I’ve gathered, is as follows. Apple brings no hardware. They bring no software. They show no mockups. They do not even completely acknowledge that they’re making a new device. The people from Apple simply say something along the lines of, “If we were to create a new platform for book/magazine/newspaper content, would you be interested in offering your content for it?”

  • Catherine Rohr on Entrepreneurship

    From “Life after VC“:

    “Prison is America’s most overlooked talent pool,” she says. “Many gang members are proven entrepreneurs who built highly successful drug operations. The thing they were bad at was risk management.”

    …

    “We’re looking for leaders,” says Rohr. “If you weren’t good at selling crack on the street corner, you’re probably not right for PEP. We want the guys who know how to run an organization and get stuff done.”

  • Why I went to Business School

    People never stopped asking me why I went to business school. I was too old, too senior and in the wrong career track. “What jobs do you think it will help you get?” they would ask. When framed that way, there was no good answer.

    There are a number of reasons:

    • Even though I was succeeding at Microsoft, I knew I had to leave. I looked ten years down the road and didn’t like what I saw: VP of something not so interesting; products I was no longer proud of; master political infighter. There were and are signs of life (Bing!) but it seemed like a long grey road ahead. But leaving for “nothing” seemed unpalatable. Leaving for Harvard was somehow easier to talk myself into.
    • I had spent 4 years heads-down on a media battle that I could now see Microsoft was going to lose and lose badly. The XBOX Live Video Marketplace is a big success in four years otherwise spent trying to make water run up hill. I’d spent too much time on politics – begging the Windows Media Player team to support some feature or another (and them lobbying me).  I’d given up a lot of personal stuff to work so hard for those four years (and there’d been payoffs career-wise) but I wanted to surface, to have fun, to interact with the world, to live.
    • My father had been dying for 5 years. I applied and was accepted before he died but it was obvious where things were going.  I felt like I needed some air – some time and space to get away and come to grips with things. Business school felt arguably more additive than surfing in Thailand for a year.
    • I felt like I knew a lot about a very narrow slice of the world. I could specify software for media really well and I was a good manager. But I just had a sense that there’s so much more out there – and on this Harvard does a great job of exposing you. I spent 2 years learning and talking about airlines and food processing companies, about factories, about sports management, about consulting companies, about politics and about finance. I also made friends from crazy places, out of the way amazing places: Brazil, Belarus, Zaire, rural China, Sweden. I feel like I know a thing or two about macroeconomics and finance and accounting and about a million other things. On this front, Harvard delivered brilliantly.
    • I wanted to be inspired by the people around me again. There was a time when Microsoft hired the brilliant and fiery college kids, the savant programmers, the ambitious drivers. Occasionally they still do (and I’d like to think I hired a few of them) but for the most part, those days are gone. There are still some of those people around but for the most part they are rich, they reflect on past glory and they leave early enough to catch their daughter’s softball game. (Which is a perfectly rational thing if that’s where you are – it’s just that I am not.) Every time someone talked about how comprehensive the healthcare plan was as a reason for staying, I felt like an idiot.
    • If I’m being honest with myself, I thought school might offer opportunities romantically. Whether it did or not, I did not capitalize on them. For the answers to that one, look within.

    All things considered, I wouldn’t change a thing (except maybe the huge bill.)

    Onwards.

  • Minsk Wedding

    I just got back from a friend’s wedding in Minsk. There were a bunch of awesome sounding weddings this season and I usually make a point of going to all the weddings I’m invited to, but given my new career situation (which I’ll be ready to talk about soon) I’ve unfortunately needed to conserve both the time and money. There’s always an exception to the rule though and my friends Paul and Jenia’s wedding in Minsk was somthing I just couldn’t miss. Highlights:

    • Yes you really can consume an entire bottle of vodka on your own and not die. You just want to.
    • There is a cured meat there that is basically just the fatty part of the bacon with all the meat part cut away. Amazing.
    • Belarussian nightclubs. Wow. We went three nights in a row.
    • The “purchase of the bride” – a Belarussian tradition where the groom and friends must convince the bride’s friends to let her go with bribes of chocolates, singing, champagne and cash. We had stacks of 10 ruble notes (worth about 1/3 of a penny.)
    • Simultaneous English / Russian / Belarussian translation of the speeches at the wedding so everybody could understand. It certainly makes for short speeches.
    • There were 17 nationalities represented at the wedding. (And that doesn’t include cheating ones like “Texas”) An amazing, awesome group of folks.
    • The younger sister of the bride (who speaks both Belarussian and English) gave a very different speech in Belarussian that her family could understand than she gave to the invited English speaking guests. I won’t reproduce it here but it was classic.
    • Belarussian singing / dancing / cover-band. You really haven’t heard Guns ‘ N ‘ Roses until you’ve heard the Belarussian cover.
    • Being beaten by birch branches in the Sauna the day after the wedding. Really the whole sauna experience which involved ice cold water, scalding sauna, absolutely ridiculous hats and of course – more cured meats.
    • Going to see Swan Lake the day after the wedding at the Belarussian Ballet. (Yes mom, I really went to the Ballet!)
    • And of course – the absolutely amazing and cool friends I met there. The only thing I find sad about weddings is at the end knowing that this group of people will probably never assemble again. As I was leaving I had the urge to tell people, “See you at the Christening.”

  • Bailout Trillions

    Barry Ritholtz calculates the total taxpayer liability of all the accumulated bailout programs at $8.5 trillion dollars. (Not including the $5.2 trillion in Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac mortgages.) US GDP was estimated in 2006 to be $13.13 trillion dollars. Wow!

  • Cap and Cash Back

    Peter Barnes has written an excellent article for Reuters on a hypothetical scheme an Obama administration might develop to address carbon emissions and stimulate investment in clean energy in a way that is financially and politically viable over the long term. Exciting stuff.