Category Archives: management

Compensation in the startup world.

Posted on November 20, 2008 by patrick

My comment to Rick Segal’s post. Peter Thiel at TechCrunch50 (timemark 18:30): He said the #1 predictor of whether or not an investment was a success or failure was the CEO salary. He drew the line at $150K. More than … Continue reading →

Posted in management, starting a company | 1 Comment

Barack Obama: inspiring leadership

Posted on October 30, 2008 by patrick

The greatest thing about this, is that Barack Obama talks, not about himself — but Americans. He inspires us to greatness. It hasn’t been since JFK and Robert Kennedy that we have had an opportunity to be inspired to greatness. … Continue reading →

Posted in management, political | Leave a comment

PASSIONATELY answer questions in an interview

Posted on October 5, 2008 by patrick

Lots of books talk about how to interview, research a job, etc. I have interviewed many software developers. As a result, in 5 minutes I can tell how many years of experience a developer has, how good they are and … Continue reading →

Posted in interviewing, management | 3 Comments

Where are you wasting your cognitive surplus?

Posted on May 7, 2008 by patrick

She heard this story and she shook her head and said, “Where do people find the time?” That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, “No one who works in TV gets to ask that … Continue reading →

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

Code Review #6 – ‘Too smart’ aka scared of being dumb

Posted on May 6, 2008 by patrick

One of the biggest failing junior developers have is that they are too ‘smart’. ‘Too smart’??? How can someone be ‘too smart’? Actually pretty easily. ‘Too smart’ is when the person spent hours looking at a problem. And the next … Continue reading →

Posted in code review, management, technical | 1 Comment

About Greatness and the true A-people

Posted on April 7, 2008 by patrick

A-people hire A-people and B-people hire C-people. If something is repeated enough times, people accept it as true without questioning either the assumption or the definitions. When people refer to A-people or B-people they fall back on easily measured metrics: … Continue reading →

Posted in management | Leave a comment

About movie theatres and bad marketing

Posted on April 7, 2008 by patrick

Continuing my comment to Rick Segal’s post: The placement of automated ticket machines at movie theatres is really a marketing question. Where are those machines placed? The movie theaters I have been to, the machines are placed on the side … Continue reading →

Posted in entertainment, management | Leave a comment

anti-sales people at LayeredTech

Posted on September 29, 2007 by patrick

Talk about a really interesting take on what being a sales person means. It is my general (perhaps misconceived) notion that when a customer contacts a sales person that their job is to try to evaluate the customer’s needs and … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, management, random silliness | 3 Comments

Code Reviews

Posted on September 3, 2007 by patrick

Sometimes a code review reveals a code problem that just keeps repeating itself again and again. So rather than creating new email messages I have decided to start posting some code reviews. This will allow me to avoid repeating myself. … Continue reading →

Posted in code review, management, technical | Leave a comment

Thoughts on how to evaluate code

Posted on May 29, 2007 by patrick

I met someone at Startup Camp2 who was non-techincal but had an idea that required technical expertise. She faced the typical problem of judging and evaluate software code in order to make sure the people she hired were: competent making … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, code review, management, technical | 5 Comments