One of the worst plagues in society is hitting developers’ communities everywhere. It is not the swine flu. It is the CMAL syndrome. I think I might have caught it as well.
Cover My A**, Legally syndrome causes developers and managers to start talking like lawyers or priests.
Allegedly, I will finish fixing the bug tomorrow.
I estimate the milestone will be completed in one hour.
The component is supposed to be ready in a week,unless something bad happens.
I hope this fix works, if not, let me know. (A real comment on a bug tracking system)
If all goes well, and no one gets sick, the plan should be realistic, allegedly.
The upgrade script is supposedly completed, on 8 out of 9 cases.
As a manager, I don’t need a constant reminder of human kind inability to control its destiny. My cat reminds me of that every morning.
A Cat Called Sushi
If there is a concrete problem that needs handling, it is worth a mention.Otherwise, let’s get the job done.
Moreover, if one estimates a task as one day long , in the morning, in most cases, it has to be finished by the end of the day.Estimating long projects is complex, but approximation of tasks that are less than eight hours long is part of profession.
The words create the mindset. Compare the passive “will be completed” with the active “I will complete”.
Does it mean that developers have to shut up and just please their managers ? Of course not. On the contrary. The relationship and language should be open and honest , not legally binding. As a manager I want to know if my decisions are stupid or not realistic. CMAL syndrome is not helping any of us.
If the manager is an idiot who is looking for a scapegoat, the legal disclaimer would not save your behind anyway.
If the manger is smart he does not need these legal and spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Hope and faith are better left to other important areas in life. I hope Dexter’s season four is as good as season two.
I’m writing this post on American Airlines flight 1823 from Seattle to Dallas.The cool part is that I have WiFI on the plane.
It was available about five years ago ,but the old service was not economical. This one works quite well.
It is always interesting to get back to the states. although it my birth place , I’m always surprised about the small differences.
Californians can’t drive in the rain. I have brought on them the worst storm in 50 years.Eight inches in a day.
The bigger surprise was that the Seattle drivers can’t drive in the rain either. Really. And they have rain all year-long.
A sign in the second floor of an office building - “the ADA approved restrooms are in the first floor“. That does not really help the blind, does it ?
The hotel breakfast has orange juice, cranberry juice, apple juice, but no H2O in sight.Except for that eight inches of rain.
There are Hebrew(s) and Jews everywhere. The San Mateo Korean laundry guy studied three years in Tel Aviv university. The barber next door is a Russian Jew named Sasha with relatives in Sderot. The Seattle newsstand actually has a Yiddish newspaper next to the fisherman bulletin. Don’t even get me started on our numbers in Hi-Tech.
Yiddish Newspaper in Seattle
The socialist corner. Seems like nothing was learned from the banks’ crisis. It is “good” for “everyone” that the bankers make millions in bonuses. If the CEO makes 180 Million , than the CIO makes five Million and he can buy IT for 20 Million. Then the vendor sales person wants to make 500K$. That’s all fine, but the base of the pyramid just went bankrupt. Maybe that’s why pyramids are built by slaves
Capitalist corner. Why would I want to hire someone who starts on talking about his IPO rights ? There were almost no tech IPO for the last two years anyway.Shouldn’t we just focus on creating a great company first?
Garmin GPS confuses Van Ness and Mission streets all the time.Just when getting out of the 101 highway. It is at a problem for at least a year now. Can anyone fix it ?
Texas confuses the GPS even more.When the exit itself is one mile long and split into to highways,one should only trust the signs.
I haven’t been to Texas for 19 years, since I taught wilderness survival in camp Constantin. Still, there is 3:1 ratio of Texas Flags to American flags.
Texas Flags Outnumber American Flags - Click for Details
Green in Texas? It is GM Trucks month in Texas
Texas Green Truck ?
I saw more uniformed American soldiers in Dallas airport in one day than in two months in San Francisco. Just saying.
Green in Texas hotel room. Why would anyone need two queen size beds with seven pillows in each bad?
In Texasmedium rare is medium rare.In California it is rare that medium rare is medium rare.It is usually well done. Which is not well. Done.
Rare Squid in Seattle
To prevent DUI, Texas has a mechanism in cars to prevent the car to start when the drivers’ breath contains alcohol. Strange.
In California age discrimination at work is defined,by default, as firing anyone who is 40+. In Israel it is up to judge to decide on the merit of the case. Seems to make more sense. Discrimination can start at 39 and might not exist on 42.
Downloading films in theAirport is a cool idea. for three dollars you can download any film to the laptop. Only problem is the ActiveX crashes.
Both of the questions are studied in first year MBA courses .They seem to make sense at a first glance, but I would try to show they are highly overrated questions.
The underlying assumption is that BBG (Big Big Giant) can use its amazing resources, huge capital , loyal customer base and brand to kill any small company if the small company does not have a great barrier to entry, which is typically a technological one.
Having worked in few BBG’s and couple of Start-Up I beg to differ. The giants tend to fail themselves.
StartUp Beats Big Big Giant Corporate
Lets start with some questions:
Why was Sun unable to succeed with its own firewall (SunScreen?) when it tried to stop OEM’ing Check Point’s?
Why was Check Point repeatedly unable to take the SOHO firewall market (FireWall-First, Small-Office, Safe@Home,Secure-1) ? NetScreen took if from CP. Then Fortinet did the same thing for NetScreen.
Why does Microsoft still lack significant footprint in the Firewall business?
Why does Microsoft ten billion dollars research budget fails to copy Google’s search algorithm for ten years?
Why is VMWARE leading over Microsoft in virtualization? Microsoft acquired Connectix in 2003. Connectix virtualization technology was almost as good as VMWARE’s at the time. Today there is a big gap in market share.
How come IBM , with years of building super computers does not have an elastic cloud solution?
How does small Riverbed perform so well among the networking giants?
What was the huge intellectual property in Windows that OS2 lacked?
Here is a hint to my proposed answer to why giants fail, details to follow on part II :
As much as I like president Obama, it seems that he got a Nobel prize for his great presentational skills, rather than his current contribution to world peace.
To contrast , the Israeli Professor Ada Yonat, who won the Nobel chemistry prize, was quoted saying “As you can see I did not go to the hair saloon”.
1. How come we can send a man to the moon, but can’t detect when the car tire is under pressured ? I Just found out that I was driving on 16PSI instead of 32PSI. Same for oil level.Same for car battery.
Funny Cat On Tire
2. Automatic shirt ironing machine. Can be built using nano-technology or little robotic ants, as far as I’m concerned.
A shirt-ironing machine from Siemens
3. Full text indexing for PC’s. I uninstalled Google desktop last week. It just does not work.
4. A way to get my cell phone SMS and voicemail in my email account. Please, Pretty please. Willing to pay.
5. A simple way to coordinate meetings across organizations and timezones.Something like exposing my google calendar to every admin in the world. It can be done in theory, but it does not really work.
6. SMS messages that are longer than 60 characters , or whatever the limit is. Come on. Really.I can load them the bandwidth.
7. Israeli restaurants accepting tips in credit card. Same for Israeli taxis.
8. When will we have a normal,working tool to sync Outlook and Gmail ?
Brain Scanner
9. Network based Scanners. And printers. Isn’t it time we could use the home All-In-One devices without an attached desktop and horrible drivers. Back in 1995 I used a protocol with the great name ,TWAIN , ( Technology Without an interesting name ) to connect scanners and PC’s. Can’t we have TWAIN over WiFi ? We can call it TWAINFI.
10. Real unification of all credit cards,sim, small change and debit cards into one simple Smart Card.No more wallets for men. The technology seems to be around for years, what’s the big problem ?
11. Laser based tooth brush that cleans the teeth in 20 seconds with perfect results.
In my May post A Mexican, a Sicilian and a Greek Walk Into a Restaurant I discussed how three different restaurants,in the same location, next to our start-up office, went out of business one after the other. Just after I posted it, a fourth restaurant opened in the same location with the brilliant name “Grey, an Israeli-American Bar- Diner”.
Guess what happened last week to the American-Israeli diner that served sushi, Asian noodles, middle-eastern grilled meats, American burgers and breakfasts.
Restaurants,like start-ups, should be very focused in their messaging and efforts. It is very hard to market excellence in five different areas.We had to decide whether to deliver our cloud solution as a service (“Public Cloud”) or an on premise product (“Private Cloud”) . Both options were viable, and there were good arguments for each road. Despite the similarities and temptation it would have been a mistake to aim at both markets at very beginning.
Even “The Cheesecake factory” focuses on a single item (with 40 variations ) from its huge menu – when it comes to branding. Personally, this is also the only item I Like to eat there. And yes, I know the picture is from another Deli …
In Part one I tried to explain how many “schmoozing” events can waste one’s time and push productivity down the drain.
In this post I’ll explain when networking is a valuable, productive and even a friendly habit.
People around me claim i’m usually over optimistic and tend to see the full half of the glass. Even when the world financial system collapsed, I thought it might bring a change and sanity to the bankers’ outrageous salaries.
Young Bankers ?
I belive in helping other people. If you can aid another person it gives a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and maybe this person would return a favor some time in the future. Recruiting is one clear example of both.
In our company we recruited at least 60% of the employees through friendly referrals from people that we already knew in the past.We were even able to recruit VP positions using LinkedIn. Since I have many friends who are managers with hard to fill open positions and many acquaintances who are looking for a new job, it is a great joy to help both sides.
I don’t always like to assist friends to reformat the hard drive but it is really fun to help others to improve their resumes and market their capabilities.It is quite often that I get a friends’ CV and I try to return it to him with gentle improvement suggestions.
Another example is acquiring the first customers for a start-up. In the early stages , one has to rely on personal connections. Obviously, there is no product, no marketing and no sales people. The main available possible assets are friendship,trust and greed.
Trust
Friendship means – I’m helping you because I like you and I want to help you.
Trust means – I know you can build a great product that will help me even though you have nothing right now.
Greed means – I will help you only because I know you and I gnat to make sure it will help me in the future, or right now.
Friendship
Many people think only of greed when they think of “Networking”, but in many cases I found that trust and friendship are the major motives for a building a great helpful network in business and life.
