Category Archives: management

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 →

Posted in management, starting a company | Leave a comment

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 →

Posted in management, starting a company | Leave a comment

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

Not commenting code is dangerous to your career

Posted on March 4, 2009 by patrick

There is this myth that code can be self-documenting and that comments are not necessary in good code. Michael recently comment on an earlier blog post advocating the idea of self-documenting code. “Self-documenting” code is a career-damaging concept, because: Your … Continue reading →

Posted in code review, management | 3 Comments

Grow your own rockstar

Posted on March 4, 2009 by patrick

I have interviewed hundreds of people, technical and otherwise. I have managed a few as well. Most interviewers do not realize that there is no “best” candidate on an absolute scale. The rockstar at Google may absolutely fail to fit … Continue reading →

Posted in career, management, starting a company | 2 Comments

FAS157: VCs whining about what they have to do anyhow

Posted on February 2, 2009 by patrick

So over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick gets all whiny about having to follow government regulations: And, now, FAS 157 has come into play — a new rule impacting many venture capitalists, forcing them to figure out what the “fair market … Continue reading →

Posted in funding, management, rants | Leave a comment