Yahoo: Mayer culpa | The Economist

Yahoo: Mayer culpa | The Economist:

Ms Mayer’s move is not just a bad idea in itself but also a nail in the coffin of the naive notion that women with big jobs help their sisters up the ladder. Her plan will knock out a few rungs. Flexible employers help women run families and jobs simultaneously. Rigid working practices make combining the two impossible or unpleasant. To be fair, as somebody who took two weeks off to have a baby, Ms Mayer is hardly asking others to do what she would not; but then she has dulled the pain of separation from her child by installing a nursery next to her office. Yahoo’s less privileged and less Stakhanovite women may well hoof it to a friendlier organisation.

But this is not just about women. A well-managed company’s workers want to be productive, and managers trust them to decide how and where they will perform best. If that’s not happening, the boss needs to find out why. You can shackle a Yahoo to his desk, but you can’t make him feel the buzz.

[A lot of folks ask what I think about this since I run a remote team with folks in 3 countries. And the short answer is if folks aren’t motivated to work you need to fix that, and not place rings around how they do what they do. Solid piece.]

Michael, Steve, & Lance

OTL: Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building – ESPN:

THE OPPOSITE OF this creeping nostalgia is the way Jordan has always collected slights, inventing them — nurturing them. He can be a breathtaking asshole: self-centered, bullying and cruel. That’s the ugly side of greatness. He’s a killer, in the Darwinian sense of the word, immediately sensing and attacking someone’s weakest spot.

[Same thing about Jobs. Same things about Lance. There are certain types of greatness that make it easy to, maybe nearly demand this behavior. I don’t think it’s required. I think it’s a flaw. But possibly one that keeps them human in the face of the searing burn they demanded of themselves.]

A VC: The Management Team – Guest Post From Joel Spolsky

A VC: The Management Team – Guest Post From Joel Spolsky:

The “management team” isn’t the “decision making” team. It’s a support function. You may want to call them administration instead of management, which will keep them from getting too big for their britches.

Administrators aren’t supposed to make the hard decisions. They don’t know enough. All those super genius computer scientists that you had to recruit from MIT at great expense are supposed to make the hard decisions. That’s why you’re paying them. Administrators exist to move the furniture around so that the people at the top of the tree can make the hard decisions.

When two engineers get into an argument about whether to use one big Flash SSD drive or several small SSD drives, do you really think the CEO is going to know better than the two line engineers, who have just spent three days arguing and researching and testing?

[Recently Joel was kind enough to have some of my team over for lunch and a tour of the FogCreek offices. It was great to see Joel again and it was interesting to see how well the design of the offices held up. I agree with the above completely. I’m there to help my team do what they need, not try and figure out everything myself. As Joel concluded… “It means hiring smart people who get things done—and then getting the hell out of the way.” I try to do just that every day.]

Fog creek 9

Why Apple Doesn’t Talk, Vol. 3: Sony’s PlayStation 4 Announcement

Why Apple Doesn’t Talk, Vol. 3: Sony’s PlayStation 4 Announcement:

If you’re going to strike early, you must strike hard. A strong offering is strong at any time. The same goes for a weak one. The difference is knowing what you have, and adjusting the message accordingly. Sony did not do that yesterday, and has now lost the opportunity to do so tomorrow.

[I continue to believe it’s easier to get these thins wrong than get them right.]

Source: Apple Outsider

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about — Creative Good

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about — Creative Good:

And this is where our story takes a turn, toward a ramification that dwarfs every other issue raised so far on Google Glass. Yes, the glasses look dorky – Google will fix that. And sure, Glass forces users to be permanently plugged-in to Google’s digital world – that’s hardly a concern for the company or, for that matter, most users out there. No. The real issue raised by Google Glass, which will either cause the project to fail or create certain outcomes you may not want (which I’ll describe), has to do with the lifebits. Once again, it’s an issue of experience.

The Google Glass feature that (almost) no one is talking about is the experience – not of the user, but of everyone other than the user. A tweet by David Yee introduces it well:

There is a kid wearing Google Glasses at this restaurant which, until just now, used to be my favorite spot.

The key experiential question of Google Glass isn’t what it’s like to wear them, it’s what it’s like to be around someone else who’s wearing them. I’ll give an easy example. Your one-on-one conversation with someone wearing Google Glass is likely to be annoying, because you’ll suspect that you don’t have their undivided attention. And you can’t comfortably ask them to take the glasses off (especially when, inevitably, the device is integrated into prescription lenses). Finally – here’s where the problems really start – you don’t know if they’re taking a video of you.

[Mark nails it.]

★ Open and Shut

★ Open and Shut:

That’s what bothers people about Apple. Everyone used Windows, why couldn’t Apple just settle for making stylish Windows machines? Smartphones required hardware keyboards and removable batteries; why did Apple make theirs with neither? Everyone knew you needed Flash Player for the “full web experience”, why did Apple drop it? 16 years after the ad campaign, “Think Different” has proven itself to be more than glib marketing. It is a simple, serious motto that serves as a guiding light for the company.

I think what Wu and his brethren believe is not that companies win by being “open”, but that they win by offering choices.

Who is Apple to decide which apps are in the App Store? That no phone will have a hardware keyboard or removable battery? That modern devices are better off without Flash Player and Java?

Where others offer choices, Apple makes decisions. What some of us appreciate is what so rankles the others — that those decisions have so often and consistently been right.

[Great stuff.]

Source: Daring Fireball

Reclining airplane seats are a terrible idea and should be banned

Reclining airplane seats are a terrible idea and should be banned:

Like Kois, and like Merlin, I’ll almost never recline my seat, except on long overnight flights where everyone is expected to be asleep.

It’s a tiny, insigificant form of protest, but it’s a small contribution toward reducing the world’s total annoyance. I think of it like social environmentalism.

[In this case I’d take it one further. I don’t fly unless I have no other choice. The entire experience is awful with one general exception… speed. There’s no faster way to get some places. Even before the TSA existed I stopped flying to Montreal. For a while I ran a dev team there. Every few weeks it was time to check in more personally. I started out flying. Took 5 or so hours with all the usual stresses and costs for a flight time of about an hour. When winter weather was poor it took much longer. Driving always took about 5 and half hours, wasn’t as affected by the weather and gave me the peace of listening to a decent car stereo, controlling my schedule, and reducing cost. Everyone thought I was a heretic. So don’t just not recline, avoid flying if at all possible. What should be banned is the airline/airport experience as it is today.]

Source: Marco.org

Good for Dell (maybe)

Good for Dell (maybe):

For Dell’s part, cutting corners has been their modus operandi for at least a decade, and the race to the bottom—especially in the consumer PC business—has taken them here. If nothing else, it may be easier for them to get out of the hole they’ve dug themselves into without a bevy of analysts screaming that the only solution is to dig faster.

[Agreed.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

CBS Bans SodaStream Ad. Where’s The Outrage?

CBS Bans SodaStream Ad. Where’s The Outrage?:

Now, CBS has essentially opened the door for its biggest advertisers to forever complain about those “annoying little competitors” that are trying to steal share. “Take them off the air. Make them stop!” is what they will scream. “You did it for Coke and Pepsi.”

And it won’t only be CBS. All media will have to bear the burden of this biased, un-capitalistic, anti-progress, move. But, guess what? This isn’t the first time in recent months CBS has overplayed its hand.

Add the fact CBS banned the Dish Network “Hopper” and now we’ve got ourselves a trend.

You heard about this, I’m sure. CBS forced the staff at CNET to change the winner of “Best In Show” at CES this year because, presumably, the technology which had already won the honor, if successful, would mean less money for CBS. It was Dish Network’s “Hopper” technology which allows viewers to skip entire advertising pods with one click. Forbes Contributor, Erik Kain, wrote a great expose on this scandal recently, “CBS Forced CNET To Drop Its ‘Best Of CES 2013′ Winner, The Dish Hopper.”

[Can’t complain about not being a little part of this anymore. Curious to know what they’re thinking over at CBS.]