It varies widely from company to company, the main factor being investor relations. You can bet that workers dress nicer when the rumors of layoffs start to circulate. Companies looking for a next round seem to be giving straightforward directives to their workers to dress a better. I know of at least one company where jeans are no longer acceptable. I have found few changes at companies who are either well-funded or profitable.
You have a point. Of course the problem with being in the "giving advice" business is that nobody wants to take the advice and actually implement it. I actually don't provide a lot of advice to my clients, they can get that from those big consulting firms with lots of MBAs but no hands-on experience... I do more tangible kinds of consulting, providing mostly marketing and investor relations collateral to my clients.
I do provide some strategic advice, but I can tell you that the quality of the strategic advice I give is inversely proportional to the likelihood that a client will consider what I have to say. Most companies, whether run by MBAs or engineers, are simply not willing to hear anything which challenges their initial assumptions about their business/technology. That's the true business-killer.
Granted, there are plenty of examples of companies which went to pot because the founders were replaced by management-types. There are also plenty of examples of companies that made it because the founders were replaced by management-types.
It is obvious that you can't run a technology company if you don't understand technology, just as you cannot run Walmart if you don't have a clue what a department store is.
(Disclosure, I am an MBA.) I have been providing services to high-tech companies for a decade, and my business has outlived those of most of my clients, and from my experience, the #1 failing point of companies is developing technology that is really cool but nobody wants, or developing technology that is really useful and not knowing how to make it into a real product. I can't tell you the number of companies I've worked for who have either never heard of a version freeze, or who freeze a version every month only to defrost it a day later.
Case in point, a good friend called me to ask me in what cases you should translate the user manuals to a different language, for example Portugese. He works for a small hw developer with real international sales. I said "well, you know how much you sell in Brazil, and your salespeople tell you how much more they might sell if people could actually use the product, and you can figure the cost yourself" (this is a system that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; read, even one extra sale would justify the cost). I continued "You know, just like you figure out whether to add a feature to the product -- you figure out how much it costs to develop the feature, and how many extra sales it will make you over the competition, and then you know if it is worth it, right??" and he was like, "Uh, well, that is a different way of thinking about it. We kind of have a meeting and discuss what to put in the product and usually we are right." Yeah, but it turns out that they don't document the new feature and nobody uses it unless they call the help desk. Etc., etc. This is a company that has been in business 15 years and has had sales for more than 10 of those years and they just went through a first round of layoffs. The obvious only reason they are laying people off is because of poor management by the founders. They should be profitable by now but they are still living off of venture capital.
You talk about the dotcom boom as if it were some kind of freak accident, but it wasn't. The eager engineers who founded all these companies really truly believed that their ideas and products had added value. And it wasn't only dotcoms -- look at all the telecom and wireless stuff. The dotcom bust was what happens when all those tecchies working out of their garages get a hold of real money. Now they are back working out of their garages, and 1% of them will emerge with something that makes money. Why 1%? Because that is the percentage of leaders out there who can be geeks and managers and marketeers, or who have the common sense to get someone to fill the gaps they don't do themselves. If you are the kind of founder who can't give real power to people who make up for your shortcomings, your company will go belly-up even quicker than the companies with managers who don't understand technology but can at least doctor the numbers.
I can think of another. http://www.activecool.com.
From what I've seen, their solid-state cooling system actually works. Not silent, but it measures temperature and includes a controller which runs the fan at variable speed as needed. Their first production run is in January.
Even if it's not cheating, doesn't it miss the point? I mean, why watch a marathon with real people? Why don't we just invent robots to do it for us, and then make it a true technology race? Oh, because that wouldn't be fun and the rich countries would always win. Hmm.
Next thing you know they'll be shutting down sites which contain sexually-explicit stuff, like describing what the priests have been doing with the alterboys...
Try to get a Green Card or American Citizenship. How many times can you struggle across the border only to be sent back to your native homeland? Raise money for the trip by taking loans from loan sharks or bartering off female relatives, or take a swim! Difficulty levels: -European (beginner) -Asian -South American -African (for advanced players only)
It is still easier to read a book on paper than one on a screen, for basic ergonomics reasons.
Affordable monitors do not provide the resolution and quality that you get from black print on white paper.
You can't put the monitor on your lap and read comfortably while in your favorite armchair.
Flipping through a book still is much easier than flipping through pages on screen.
Until these basic ergonomic problems are solved, there is no substitute for a printed manual. It's not likely that we are going to alter the human body enough to make it more convenient to read on-screen, so computers have a lot of catching up to do.
This is an extraordinarily closed-minded view. It's like saying "men can't fly". You are looking at today's interfaces for computer administration, and saying: this is something too complex for the average person. But the problem isn't the user; the problem is the way in which the computer presents the problem. At this stage, computers present problems in an incredibly simplified way compared to how human beings present them. Likewise, computers understand problems in a simplified way. This could conceivably change, not tomorrow, but five or ten years down the road. Just 20 years ago we were using punch cards, don't forget.
I'm not saying any person can become a programmer, but the average person can. Computers could feasibly be easy enough to use that Joe User could write a program simply by defining the problem. That's what 4th-generation programming is about. For that matter, that's what the computer interface in Star Trek is about (though I always wonder, if the computer understood everything else, why did you need Scotty to beam you up?). There will be fifth-generation programming, too.
You shouldn't have to be a genuis to figure out how to make and maintain a classified advertisement Web site and customize it for your needs. We all know that defining the problem and the need is half of the solution. So if the user is smart enough to know what he needs, there is no reason that computers cannot advance to the point where they could meet the user at that point.
The kind of attitude expressed by this post is the typical attitude shown by lawyers, doctors and other elitist professionals. If we techies can continue to keep the languages we use obscure, we can continue to maintain our elite position in society. And, you know what, really, it's better that way, isn't it? If we actually let the masses understand (the law, medicine, computers, government...), they would just abuse this power. Look what they did when we just gave them their choice of fonts! No, it's best just to keep everything geeky completely inaccessible to the riff-raff, and we really brilliant people who know what's best for them will take care of them, whether they understand it or not.
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It varies widely from company to company, the main factor being investor relations. You can bet that workers dress nicer when the rumors of layoffs start to circulate. Companies looking for a next round seem to be giving straightforward directives to their workers to dress a better. I know of at least one company where jeans are no longer acceptable. I have found few changes at companies who are either well-funded or profitable.
You have a point. Of course the problem with being in the "giving advice" business is that nobody wants to take the advice and actually implement it. I actually don't provide a lot of advice to my clients, they can get that from those big consulting firms with lots of MBAs but no hands-on experience... I do more tangible kinds of consulting, providing mostly marketing and investor relations collateral to my clients.
I do provide some strategic advice, but I can tell you that the quality of the strategic advice I give is inversely proportional to the likelihood that a client will consider what I have to say. Most companies, whether run by MBAs or engineers, are simply not willing to hear anything which challenges their initial assumptions about their business/technology. That's the true business-killer.
Granted, there are plenty of examples of companies which went to pot because the founders were replaced by management-types. There are also plenty of examples of companies that made it because the founders were replaced by management-types.
It is obvious that you can't run a technology company if you don't understand technology, just as you cannot run Walmart if you don't have a clue what a department store is.
(Disclosure, I am an MBA.)
I have been providing services to high-tech companies for a decade, and my business has outlived those of most of my clients, and from my experience, the #1 failing point of companies is developing technology that is really cool but nobody wants, or developing technology that is really useful and not knowing how to make it into a real product. I can't tell you the number of companies I've worked for who have either never heard of a version freeze, or who freeze a version every month only to defrost it a day later.
Case in point, a good friend called me to ask me in what cases you should translate the user manuals to a different language, for example Portugese. He works for a small hw developer with real international sales. I said "well, you know how much you sell in Brazil, and your salespeople tell you how much more they might sell if people could actually use the product, and you can figure the cost yourself" (this is a system that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; read, even one extra sale would justify the cost). I continued "You know, just like you figure out whether to add a feature to the product -- you figure out how much it costs to develop the feature, and how many extra sales it will make you over the competition, and then you know if it is worth it, right??" and he was like, "Uh, well, that is a different way of thinking about it. We kind of have a meeting and discuss what to put in the product and usually we are right." Yeah, but it turns out that they don't document the new feature and nobody uses it unless they call the help desk. Etc., etc. This is a company that has been in business 15 years and has had sales for more than 10 of those years and they just went through a first round of layoffs. The obvious only reason they are laying people off is because of poor management by the founders. They should be profitable by now but they are still living off of venture capital.
You talk about the dotcom boom as if it were some kind of freak accident, but it wasn't. The eager engineers who founded all these companies really truly believed that their ideas and products had added value. And it wasn't only dotcoms -- look at all the telecom and wireless stuff. The dotcom bust was what happens when all those tecchies working out of their garages get a hold of real money. Now they are back working out of their garages, and 1% of them will emerge with something that makes money. Why 1%? Because that is the percentage of leaders out there who can be geeks and managers and marketeers, or who have the common sense to get someone to fill the gaps they don't do themselves. If you are the kind of founder who can't give real power to people who make up for your shortcomings, your company will go belly-up even quicker than the companies with managers who don't understand technology but can at least doctor the numbers.
I can think of another.
http://www.activecool.com.
From what I've seen, their solid-state cooling system actually works. Not silent, but it measures temperature and includes a controller which runs the fan at variable speed as needed. Their first production run is in January.
Even if it's not cheating, doesn't it miss the point? I mean, why watch a marathon with real people? Why don't we just invent robots to do it for us, and then make it a true technology race? Oh, because that wouldn't be fun and the rich countries would always win. Hmm.
Next thing you know they'll be shutting down sites which contain sexually-explicit stuff, like describing what the priests have been doing with the alterboys...
Try to get a Green Card or American Citizenship. How many times can you struggle across the border only to be sent back to your native homeland? Raise money for the trip by taking loans from loan sharks or bartering off female relatives, or take a swim! Difficulty levels: -European (beginner) -Asian -South American -African (for advanced players only)
- Affordable monitors do not provide the resolution and quality that you get from black print on white paper.
- You can't put the monitor on your lap and read comfortably while in your favorite armchair.
- Flipping through a book still is much easier than flipping through pages on screen.
Until these basic ergonomic problems are solved, there is no substitute for a printed manual. It's not likely that we are going to alter the human body enough to make it more convenient to read on-screen, so computers have a lot of catching up to do.I'm not saying any person can become a programmer, but the average person can. Computers could feasibly be easy enough to use that Joe User could write a program simply by defining the problem. That's what 4th-generation programming is about. For that matter, that's what the computer interface in Star Trek is about (though I always wonder, if the computer understood everything else, why did you need Scotty to beam you up?). There will be fifth-generation programming, too.
You shouldn't have to be a genuis to figure out how to make and maintain a classified advertisement Web site and customize it for your needs. We all know that defining the problem and the need is half of the solution. So if the user is smart enough to know what he needs, there is no reason that computers cannot advance to the point where they could meet the user at that point.
The kind of attitude expressed by this post is the typical attitude shown by lawyers, doctors and other elitist professionals. If we techies can continue to keep the languages we use obscure, we can continue to maintain our elite position in society. And, you know what, really, it's better that way, isn't it? If we actually let the masses understand (the law, medicine, computers, government...), they would just abuse this power. Look what they did when we just gave them their choice of fonts! No, it's best just to keep everything geeky completely inaccessible to the riff-raff, and we really brilliant people who know what's best for them will take care of them, whether they understand it or not.
Yeah, right.