Endurance Learning
“Judge each day by the seeds you plant, not the harvest you reap” Teaching your child to ride on a bicycle is very fulfilling, but can also be frustrating to both you and your child.…
Lucky Generals
“I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good” (Napoleon Bonaparte) I thought of this saying, and it seemed weird to me on a few levels: Luck is not something…
Engineering Managers Should Code 31% of Their Time
It all started when I (and people on my team) read this post: http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/engineering-managers-should-code-30-of-t/240165174 Well… I think the saying shouldn’t be “Managers should code X% of their time”. That’s just a tabloid/provocative headline, and it’s…
Goals
Goals are a good thing. You feel motivated to pursue them, you feel satisfied when you reach them. You probably heard about SMART goals. If not, here’s a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria For your…
Surprises
Some people say they like to be surprised. Sometimes it can be fun, really. Most people don’t like to be surprised, though, especially not in their ‘professional life’. Surprises are rarely good nor fun… There’s…
How to never fail
In rock climbing, courses are graded based on their difficulty, and in general, the higher the grade the harder the course. There are several grading scales, where one of the popular ones is the Yosemite…
Building a Great Mobile Team – Personal Thoughts
A while back I read a great blog post by Elad Gil who kick started Google’s Mobile efforts (see link for the full post). In the past 1.5 years we built our own mobile group…
So, one of your employees think they have a great idea…
In a marketing book I once read (entitled Marketing Managment (2000), by Prof. Jacob Hornik and Prof. Phillip Kotler) there’s a chapter about introducing a change into an organization. Besides discussing various ways to do…
Management and Momentum
There are many roles a manager needs to fill. The manager is accountable for the team’s goals, helping individuals perform, give feedback and measure performance, act as a mentor and a leader, make decisions and,…
Team of Stars or a Star Team
One of the more exciting experiences I can think of as a manager is the opportunity to build a new team. Besides the chance to face new challenges, it has this feeling of going back…