Category Archives: management

User-Generated Content? Do not use BurstNET

Posted on July 20, 2010 by patrick

A hosting provider, BurstNet, shut down a wordpress hosting service, Blogetery.com, last week. This is an example of egregious abuse of power by BurstNET against Blogetery.com. Blogetery.com hosts 70,000 wordpress blogs. Apparently, a few of those blogs had “an al-Qaeda … Continue reading →

Posted in management, starting a company | Leave a comment

If you don’t vote, your opinion doesn’t matter. And sometimes you shouldn’t vote

Posted on June 24, 2010 by patrick

(This post is related to management I promise! ) Robert Cruickshank over at the California HSR Blog whines about Palo Alto’s “undemocratic” democratic process: In short, it is becoming increasingly clear that Palo Alto’s planning and citizen engagement process is … Continue reading →

Posted in how to, management, political | Leave a comment

why people bother to interview here – if you can’t teach (Part 2)

Posted on June 3, 2010 by patrick

Part 1 was a technical question that I ask because so many “strong” developers cannot answer that technical Java question. Part 2, is more about the valuable soft skill of teaching. One of my standard questions that candidates constantly struggle … Continue reading →

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Bad management advice from Jason Calacanis

Posted on May 28, 2010 by patrick

I am beginning to think that Jason Calacanis’ advice should be taken in the opposite. Jason Calacanis’s latest advice on when to fire people ignores human psychology: Calacanis goes on to examine the three categories of that mistakes and employees … Continue reading →

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Empathic Developers?

Posted on January 16, 2010 by patrick

Amazing! Someone else also recognizes the crying need for “soft”, people skills in the hard, rocket science techie community! I ran into Ari Krupnik at the Hacker Dojo job fair. I have constantly beaten my head against the wall trying … Continue reading →

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Blame. NO. Responsibility. YES!

Posted on August 16, 2009 by patrick

When reaching for the stars, something will go wrong. Rockets blow-up. Servers crash. Regressions happen. How you handle the setbacks is critical. Blame is a useless response. Blame is negative. After blame has been assigned, the rocket is still in … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, management, starting a company | Leave a comment

The 100-hour work week myth

Posted on July 5, 2009 by patrick

Chris Yeh calls out workaholism as the stupid choice it is: If you work 100-hour weeks, no one (investors, co-founders, employees) can blame you if things don’t work out, right? And I like to think I’ve worked a lot smarter … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, management, rants, starting a company | 4 Comments

Code Review #8: When to comment

Posted on March 16, 2009 by patrick

The last ? in a series of posts about commenting. See “the why”. See “not commenting is career threatening”. And the comment that started this off! This post should have really been the second one I wrote. The first post … Continue reading →

Posted in code review, management | 1 Comment

Third person in the room

Posted on March 14, 2009 by patrick

Passion is a wonderful thing. When someone is “wrong” about a subject that you care passionately about, it is natural to argue with them and try to “prove” to them that they are wrong. Don’t. Mentally step back. Look around. … Continue reading →

Posted in how to, management, marketing, political, starting a company | Leave a comment

Code Review #7 – Comment the “why” not the “what”

Posted on March 4, 2009 by patrick

[This post continues the response to Mike.] Clean “good” code is good but not enough. Code needs comments — but the right kind of comments. “What” comments are useless and the most quickly out-dated. An example of a what comment … Continue reading →

Posted in code review, management, technical | 6 Comments