Via Business Insider:
Most successful projects have a single engineer responsible for driving the project forward while ensuring that strong technical decisions are made with confidence. Typically, that person is referred to as a Tech Lead.
They often don’t manage people, but instead coach them to do their best work.
Every company is different, but there are some common threads among the best tech leads
Via Business Insider:
What did Google do to provoke such amusing evidence of workplace frustration?
Has the Zagat acquisition been a waste of Google's time and money and gone terribly wrong?
After speaking with a number of sources, some of whom worked in Google's Zagat division for the past year or so, we have a story that answers those questions.
It's a story about coming close to having something awesome, only to see it slip away.
It's about the collision between the wealthy dream world of the technology industry and the scratch-and-claw meager existence of freelance writers.
It's also a story about how a few seemingly small changes at the top of a large company can develop into deep, life-changing tremors at the bottom.
How A Great Google Workplace Turned Into A 'Nightmare' - Business Insider
Interesting case study about management and leadership.
Via TCS Daily:
What kinds of jobs would survive? Two kinds, I think. The obvious kinds are those needing the human touch…I suspect that a lot of jobs that could theoretically be taken by machines won't be, because people will still prefer the human version…But how many of those jobs will there be?
The other kind of job is more significant, and more likely to survive: the kind of job that hasn't been invented yet…Despite the fact that no linotype operators are employed in the production of this column, it's not really true that unemployment has resulted from the introduction of new communications technologies. Jobs don't so much disappear as they change.
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Via Project Management Institute:
Is there a defined career path at your organization? If not, what do you think are the barriers to developing one? If there is one, how is it affecting business success?
Bloggers Sound Off: Project Management Career Paths - Voices on Project Management
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Via LinkedIn:
…time isn't the problem, says Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan. The ultimate barrier to success is a shortage of mental "bandwidth," or the ability to focus on a task in the moment.
Mullainathan's research focuses on scarcity, and how humans respond when they have a shortage of something -- be it money, food or time. He presented his findings Thursday at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival, along with his research partner, Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir.
What they've discovered is that shortages lead people to make poor decisions. That's because the brain can only process so much.
A Harvard Economist's Surprisingly Simple Productivity Secret | LinkedIn
Via Business Insider:
The inventor of the World Wide Web said the internet is facing a “major” threat from “people who want to control it on the sly” through “worrying laws” such as SOPA, the US anti-piracy act, and through the actions of internet giants.
“If you can control [the internet], if you can start tweaking what people say, or intercepting communications, it's very, very powerful...it's the sort of power that if you give it to a corrupt government, you give them the ability to stay in power forever.”
Berners-Lee: Forces Are 'Trying To Take Control' Of The Internet - Business Insider
Via Business Insider:
Stuck with dwindling profits in an era of poor returns and heavy regulation, the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and HSBC are battling to hire the best software programmers, systems engineers and data analysts, to help them get ahead via new technology and cost-cutting.
With IT expertise now a must for the boardroom, banks' conservative workplaces are likely to undergo cultural change as they welcome ambitious, differently-minded people.
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Via Armed with Science:
The goal of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is to generate groundbreaking research and development so that future robotics can perform the most hazardous activities. This is so that, in future disaster response operations – and in tandem with their human counterparts – they can have the capacity to reduce casualties, avoid further destruction, and save lives. So what is DARPA looking for in the next generation of robots?
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Via Wired:
Paul’s ongoing challenge is to form a winning political coalition that unites right-wing and left-wing libertarians, and his trip to the center of America’s tech sector is an early test of that coalition’s tensile strength.
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Via The Daily Beast:
All those interviews you do for new employees are terrible at predicting subsequent job performance. It's a scientific fact. And no, I'm not picking on you. Job interviews are just not very useful.
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Via NY Times:
…technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.
Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts.
Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders - NYTimes.com
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Via Christian Science Monitor:
Bartneck found a greater variety in the facial expressions of Lego figures after 1989. He and his colleagues separated the expressions into six general categories: disdain, confidence, concern, fear, happiness, and anger.
Over time, the authors observed a trend: The proportion of happy faces decreased, while the proportion of angry faces increased. Their study will be presented at the First International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction in Sapporo, Japan, in August.
This reflects the next frontier of robotics: infusing our machines with personality.
Via Technology Review:
Receiving remote medical care is becoming more common as technologies improve and health records get digitized. Sense.ly, the California startup running the trial, is one of more than 500 companies using health-care tools from Nuance, a company that develops speech-recognition and virtual-assistant software. “Our goal is basically to capture the patient’s state of mind and body,” says Ivana Schnur, cofounder of Sense.ly and a clinical psychologist who has spent years developing virtual-reality tools in medicine and mental health.
The real play will be robots/avatars than can tailor personalities to accommodate human clients.
Via Business Insider:
the world is a complex place and it’s only getting more so, which is why many management thinkers have been urging businesses to embrace complexity, to become, in effect, system thinkers rather than reductionists.
As Richard Straub noted in a recent article in HBR, that effort has largely failed and we shouldn’t be surprised. Executives are paid to be accountable and are understandably reluctant to give themselves up to the complexity Gods. In truth, complexity is not something we need to embrace, merely something we need to accept and manage.
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Via Business Insider:
Kagan's work as a futurist led him to the idea for his startup, Quixey, a search engine for apps used by companies like Microsoft, Sprint, and Ask.com.
Before we can use all these new apps, we'll need to find them. Quixey is focused on "functional search" he says. That means it can take "any request and find you the best app for that request."
Via Business Insider:
High-level decision-makers are harder than ever to reach. If you are looking to develop strong connections to the most senior people in big companies, then consider NOT SELLING to them. Connect with them first. Bring them value on neutral ground and see if that opens the door for a business opportunity.
So, how do you do that? Well, every industry is looking for insight and best practices. Why not reach out to the marketplace leaders in your target-customer industry and ask for their opinions? It's a good way to honor them and it lets you start off your relationship with greater parity.
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Via Yahoo News:
President Barack Obama says he wants 99 percent of American students connected to super-fast Internet within five years. He's directing federal regulators to use an existing program to equip schools with broadband Internet.
Obama says the rest of the world is trying to out-educate the U.S. He says the nation must give all students the tools needed to go as far as their hard work and ambition will take them.
Obama pushes plan for fast Internet in US schools | Watch the video - Yahoo! News
Via Business Insider:
We have what we call an "uncomfortable level of transparency" where we share information as if every employee was a [top] manager.
Our wiki exposes things like cash balance, burn rate last month, valuations, impact on dilution, customers we're talking to. Anything that the company is in a position to legally share, our default is to share it.
Even [the performance of] individual groups. If we have a group that's particularly struggling, we share it.
…
We have very animated debates on our internal wiki, even criticizing management decisions. I've had my share of flames on the Wiki, "Darmesh, that's just stupid." An employee just hired two weeks ago can flame the CEO and not get fired.
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Via Bankers Anonymous:
Working for yourself, in a business you founded, makes it much more likely that you’ll do something you love.
Working for someone else, for a salary, makes it much more likely that you’ll be asked to come in on Saturdays to work on the TPS reports.
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Via Bankers Anonymnous:
If you do plan to work on increasing your personal pile of money, you cannot afford to work for a salary, for someone else, on a fixed income. You need to start building equity, like, right now.
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Via Bankers Anonymous:
Everyone in the for-profit world should aspire to build and run his or her own business.
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Via Elephant Journal:
A startup company named Ecovative has a vision of making a vast variety of building materials from mushrooms, and the company CEO, Eben Bayer, is not hallucinating—at least some experts think he’s not.
The building materials are grown in dark places, where the mushrooms feast on agricultural trash. The result is bricks strong enough to destroy metal saw blades, insulation better than Styrofoam and beams as strong as wood.
All of which is biodegradable and could be used as garden mulch.
Because of their innovative work, and reuse of agricultural refuse, Ecovative has received grants from the EPA, the Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.
Mushrooms as the Building Material of the Future. ~ Thomas Detras | elephant journal
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Via New Republic:
The goal of books such as this one is not to predict but to reassure—to show the commoners, who are unable on their own to develop any deep understanding of what awaits them, that the tech-savvy elites are sagaciously in control.
Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen:"The New Digital Age"'s Futurist Schlock | New Republic
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Ponder: A contrarian take on a book written by high-powered tech executives.
Hardcover Kindle Audio
Via Wall Street Journal:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday came out with a road map for navigating the future of self-driving cars.
Roadmap for Self-Driving Cars: Five Highlights - Law Blog – WSJ
They’re he-e-e-re.
Via Instapundit and New Criterion:
What is a liberal education and what it is for? From Cicero’s artes liberales, to the attempts at common curricula in more recent times, to the chaotic cafeteria that passes for a curriculum in most American universities today, the concept has suffered from vagueness, confusion, and contradiction. From the beginning, the champions of a liberal education have thought of it as seeking at least four kinds of goals.
One was as an end in itself, or at least as a way of achieving that contemplative life that Aristotle thought was the greatest happiness. Knowledge and the acts of acquiring and considering it were the ends of this education and good in themselves.
A second was as a means of shaping the character, the style, the taste of a person—to make him good and better able to fit in well with and take his place in the society of others like him.
A third was to prepare him for a useful career in the world, one appropriate to his status as a free man. For Cicero and Quintilian, this meant a career as an orator that would allow a man to protect the private interests of himself and his friends in the law courts and to advance the public interest in the assemblies, senate, and magistracies.
The fourth was to contribute to the individual citizen’s freedom in ancient society. Servants were ignorant and parochial, so free men must be learned and cosmopolitan; servants were ruled by others, so free men must take part in their own government; servants specialized to become competent at some specific and limited task, so free men must know something of everything and understand general principles without yielding to the narrowness of expertise.
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A perspective on what a liberal education is about.
Via Christianity Today:
Systematic search programs have dramatically increased the rate of discovery of NEOs and lowered the risk of impact. As of 1990, only 134 NEOs had been discovered. Today, more than 8,800 have been identified. No large asteroid yet discovered is likely to impact Earth within the next 200 years, though the asteroid Apophis will pass within the orbits of communication satellites on April 13, 2029.
An object's path would need to be altered only slightly to transform a catastrophe into a harmless fly-by. Yeomans offers several feasible suggestions for such a mission, but success would depend on early detection and thorough analysis. The worst-case scenario would be a large long-period comet heading toward Earth. Long-period comets are practically invisible until they pass Jupiter, at which point we would have only nine months before a potential impact.
A greater problem could be the political question of who is responsible for coordinating a deflection mission. On October 6, 2008, astronomers at the Minor Planet Center, JPL, and NASA detected a small asteroid that would explode over northern Sudan in less than 12 hours. They suggested that US officials contact the Sudanese government to prevent panic and request permission to collect meteor fragments. Because of a lack of formal relations between the two countries, however, no one in Sudan could be contacted in time.
Policy implications because of the need for transnational collaboration.
Via Christianity Today:
This is the first book-length treatment (that I know of) of the NEO problem that aims to describe that problem to audiences not familiar with it. It only partially succeeds in doing that, mainly because the writing shifts between popular and technical voices. In one breath planets are anthropomorphized (Neptune is a wimp, Jupiter a bully), while in another there's a long, complex sentence that's hard to follow because of technical jargon. (For one example, see page 130: "If we then imagine a plane drawn through the Earth and perpendicular to the object's flight path with respect to the Earth, the three-dimensional uncertainty ellipsoid will project onto the Earth's impact plane as a two-dimensional uncertainty ellipse.").This will limit the book's audience, I fear, mainly to those already familiar with NEO issues.
Yeomans marshals every reason I've heard of to study NEOs, to visit them, and to generally move them higher up on everyone's political agenda. NEOs are interesting because they've been around since the beginning of the solar system. They're dangerous because they can kill us. They could be mined for precious metals. They could be a way-station on the trip to Mars. They may tell us something about the origins of life on Earth.
More going on in the heavens.
Via Christianity Today:
the disembodied, instantaneous nature of today's Internet communication cultivates and rewards acrimony where there should be love. To this point, Alastair Roberts observed in response to a recent blogosphere brush-up an "almost pathological need to take offence" that prevails. Compound such a pathology with the celebrity culture (yes, even among Christians) and the tribalism that dominate our media-saturated world, and there's no wonder that something as quiet as love gets left in the virtual dust.
Not that love means lack of disagreement. To the contrary, the biblical admonition to speak the truth in love assumes error and therefore disagreement. Yet, despite these disagreements, I remember it being said somewhere that the world will know we are Christians, not by being right, but by our love for one another.
They Will Know Us By Our Angry Blogs | Her.meneutics | Christianitytoday.com
Some useful thoughts about online demeanor and response.
Via The Globe and Mail:
What’s missing from our classrooms and our culture, Eagleton says, is discussion of the literariness of literature, of what makes a poem different from a stop sign, or a novel about grief different from the account of grief in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As an English professor might say, we’re good on content, not so good on form. We go straight for what the play says, and ignore how it says it.
A major critic says we’ve forgotten how to read. Does it matter? - The Globe and Mail
Literature as a counterweight to overemphasis on science and technology?
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Hardcover Kindle