Doug I know I'm just a silly fanboy -- but I'd be curious about what else you got to see at apple during that era, and any other insights you have on startups...
Start-ups? Business is business. it can be as high-stress or as peaceful as you decide to make it. Software development, these days, is often dysfunction practiced as an artform. :-) Give SCRUM a shake, and waterfall drops to the floor, quivering in embarrassment. Add your examples here. My best development advice is solve the hard problems first, not last. If there are no hard problems, look again. If all parts of the development process are equally difficult, then it should be fairly easy to estimate time to complete...to over-simplify...
This has worked through-out history. Alexander The Great attacked the enemy line at its strongest point, with well-rested, fired-up troops, who knew the battle would be fierce but short. Ditto Patton and Colin Powell. And Karl Rove perfected going at an opposing candidate's greatest strength; a lesson learned by the Obama campaign…thank goodness. :-)
I know myself that I find it just irritating if I get praise for mediocre work, which should be plain to see for anybody who care that it isn't anything special.
I don't know Bangladesh culture but I would expect that there would be similar mechanisms at work. They don't want unwarranted praise. They wanted when they have performed well.
I am guessing because from when I lived in the US, there was one thing I could find common ground among all other foreign students whether they were Japanese or Spanish and that was that American optimism and positivism is a bit alien to everybody. Don't misunderstand I think it is quite admirable that Americans are so positive and can-do attitude. The rest of the world could certainly learn a bit from that. But as with most things there is always a flip side of the coin.
Sometimes Americans seem to hit the wall of reality a bit too hard because optimism was running a too high compared to what was realistically possible.
It's interesting to see the differences anyway.
Anyway interesting with the BD colleagues of yours. I am most familiar with Vietnamese. I can't remember anything in particular about their view on criticism. But they preferred very detailed descriptions of what they were supposed to do.
When you go to a good music instructor, for example, you're paying for the well reasoned criticism, although encouragement is also vital. The masters can give both, in the right proportions.
I like this bit. Very good advice, no doubt. But what about "no pain, no gain"? Or, conversely, if it doesn't hurt somehow, you can be pretty sure you're not making any progress. It applies to intellectual pursuits like software development as well as high-achievement sports. You don't have to extend the thought very far to come to a similar conclusion, that you're not going to solve hard problems without a bit of suffering. Similarly I don't think Hertzfeld and co. built the Mac by working 35 hour weeks.