jeremytliles

And the replacement of our manufacturing base by Japan and then China is not an issue?

Unemployed consumers don't consume.

I think I missed the part where he had the leverage to make that kind of demand. Perhaps even the brand-name consulting firms have figured out that ridiculous severance packages don't make a whole lot of sense.

I forget his name at the moment, but the author of "The Management Myth" retired early from management consulting to write a book on philosophy.

Although I agree with most of the premises of the article, I was dumbfounded by the assertion that marketing is a creative role that doesn't require mathematical skills. Marketing is quite analytical in nature, and is not about dreaming up ad campaigns (that is advertising). So Google's sins in this case were: 1) an inexperienced interviewer; 2) a rude interviewer. Despite these flaws, Google accomplished its goal, which was to rule out a candidate with poor analytical skills.

Bowker is the official issuer in the US. Different countries have different issuers. The cost-per-ISBN goes down as you buy larger blocks.

In business school we were taught to incorporate uncertainty into projections and models, at the very least by including multiple scenarios. I'm surprised this isn't done in the real world as it doesn't require that much additional effort once you've set up a baseline and identified your assumptions.

I think the comparison with housing is interesting, especially given the social status implications. RE: tuition vs. CPI, I think it has been pretty well documented that tuition increases have far exceeded CPI, at least over the last 20-30 years.

It would be interesting to also examine what educational institutions will have to do should they come under pricing pressure. If tuition has to go down, how can they increase revenues from other streams or cut costs?

And as Howard Lindzon alludes to in the comments, is there a social cost? Is there an important element of kids achieving quasi-independence in the shelter of a university setting apart from the educational material itself, and if so how can this be replaced?

If you're interested in doing this:

1. Google "POSE Running". The site has lots of information and drills for changing your form to accommodate a mid-foot strike.

2. Consider transitioning by using racing flats instead of immediately going to barefoot/Vibrams. Or get both and run in the flats but do all your walking around in the Vibrams. This will allow you to gradually strengthen your feet, ankles, and calves.

3. Start on grass with short distances, focusing on form.

I can save him the trouble of writing the book with one (compound) word: Crossfit.

They mix up the movements and there is a rest day every fourth day. If I do deadlifts one day, box jumps and pullups the next, and running/situps/back extensions on day 3, my body can handle it just fine. It beats running or biking every day, and I know plenty of people who do that, putting the same stresses on the same muscles day in and day out.

You have to listen to your body of course. When I first started, sometimes I would take extra days off when I knew I needed recovery time. As with any activity, you have to be smart about what you're doing.

I guess if you're completely unfamiliar with running, lifting, and movements like pullups and pushups, then you should probably start by going to an affiliate where a trainer can start you out on proper progressions, as opposed to learning the movements yourself. But I don't think going from couch-potato to Crossfit is any worse/harder than going from couch-potato to the sorts of low-effectiveness workouts I see out-of-shape people doing at the gym all the time. The key is knowing or getting to know your own body.

Yep, expense is one reason I haven't joined an affiliate. Luckily, I'm able to get through most stuff at my Bally's if I go when it isn't crowded, but I've thought about finding an affiliate.

The reason I thought this might be interesting for hackers is because it is high-intensity but fairly low time-commitment, it is effective (results/time), and it isn't boring (lots of different movements to learn).

Also, desk-bound people like programmers tend to suffer from weak posterior-chain muscles, which are emphasized in Crossfit.

I liked that as well. Although I am no expert on exercise science, I believe the science behind Crossfit is relatively solid. I've been doing it for about 2 months and it really is the most effective all-around workout I've done. The focus is on functional movements and a mix of strength and metabolic conditioning. And you really only need 30-45 minutes to do a warmup and workout.

That said, there is a somewhat off-putting Crossfitter ethos of overdoing it and injuring yourself, and some of the folks give off a cultish vibe. But if you're smart about learning the movements and knowing your body, I really think it's worth trying. I was skeptical and now I'm hooked.

I'm not sure what you've written here is entirely in opposition to the Crossfit philosophy, although they don't emphasize bench. I agree that beginners should be cautious about learning the movements properly and scaling.

Crossfit hits all the major groups, but not every day. You might hit squats one day, then the next be doing running and pullups--one group recovers while you work others.

I'm not claiming that Crossfit is perfect for everyone. If you're training for specific sports or for general bulk or for a model's physique with a lot of non-functional muscle, then maybe Crossfit isn't ideal for you. I just haven't seen any better all-around program for a sound athletic base.

My guess is that he wanted to see if you could think your way towards some kind of algorithmic approach. I think his biggest mistake was not moving on to something else after a minute or two. I've used these sorts of questions in interviews before, but usually just as a small part of the overall interview. I prefer to ask questions that relate more to what we're actually doing (a real project, a real technical challenge we recently faced, etc.)

I wonder if FB has formal standards for its interview process, or if they just grab someone and say "Hey, go interview this guy."

I think the idea is that if TechStars accepts you, then you quit your day jobs and jump in full-time. That is part of the opportunity they are providing.

I think this is a great point. At the stage a TechStars company is at, they need founders and advisors. Anything else is going to create inefficiencies. And if they're lacking in hacking talent such that they need one of these interns, then they just don't have the right founder mix.

If a team is missing some key capabilities for producing a functioning prototype, then it should bring someone else in and provide some equity.

Having had to use Blackboard several times in the past, I have a hard time believing they have any IP that should be protected. As I recall, their functionality is similar to any number of portal-type applications (groups, discussions, document postings, different access levels, etc.) It looks to me as if their patents rest on the fact that they are applying obvious processes/technology to a specific vertical: education.

Of course I'm not an IP lawyer, this is just my layman's opinion.

I actually live in the Belmar development in Colorado that is mentioned in the article. For the most part, we've been quite happy with it. With a Whole Foods, restaurants, bars, public library, and many stores only a 5-minute walk away, we can go days without needing to use the car.

You're definitely making a trade-off though, paying substantially more per square foot than you would for older, traditional housing stock in the same area, and foregoing space and a yard. I get the feeling most people in this area will still choose the horrors of a 45-minute commute so that they can live in a cookie-cutter home with a postage-stamp yard, as opposed to a relatively small condominium.

The article doesn't hit this point very hard, but I also think it's important to get public transportation into the equation with these developments. Mass transit options are limited in this area, and I hate that I pretty much have to use my car to travel to downtown Denver or Boulder.

Interesting. In my experience, company leaders typically engineer discussions in order to validate what they already believe, and of course it can be a career-limiter to argue too forcefully with one's superior. I think it takes an executive with extraordinary vision to actually create a culture where dissension is encouraged and people with differing views truly engage and are fairly listened to.

I believe I've read somewhere that some high percentage of business leaders are classified as optimists, which probably creates a tendency to downplay the negatives of business situations. In an overall sense, this may be a good thing, as it leads people to attempt things that seem crazy to others, but it can obviously also lead to excessive risk-taking and sundry disasters.

Some of the coursework is difficult precisely because it is unstructured. I didn't find the finance courses to be particularly difficult because the problems typically fit into a fairly neat structure: "price this option" or "value this project/company".

One of the more difficult courses I had focused on managing small-to-medium businesses. The issues and cases we discussed tended not to be quantitative in nature, but really honed critical thinking. A particular case I remember dealt with a struggling, family-owned company whose founder/CEO had just died in the midst of an IP lawsuit, etc. (I don't remember all the details). Imagine you are brought in to run the company. What do you do first, second, third, fourth? The challenges are legal, financial, technical, and interpersonal. There are multiple crises: which do you delegate, which have to be dealt with immediately, and which can wait? What information do you need and from where are you going to get it? The answers are not always obvious and don't necessarily fit inside a neat framework. This is "hard" in a different way from advanced quantitative analysis of futures and options.

1. Learning to express oneself concisely (while still conforming to rules of grammar) as well as verbosely may make one a better writer.

2. Writing tweets does not necessarily help one learn to express oneself concisely. For many, it leads to dropped articles, lack of punctuation, and other issues that may reduce the expressiveness of the prose.

However, kudos to her for coming up with a headline that attracts attention and page views.

I went to this last year (of course it was easy for me because I live in Denver). It was a great event with a lot of useful information. It is a great opportunity to meet the people who will be making the acceptance decisions and hopefully make a positive impression. Foodzie, one of the companies that made the cut last year, did a nice job of this; they gave everyone a piece of candy packaged with their logo.

If you have a team together already and are good at meet-and-greets, I say fly in. If you're a solo founder and/or not that interested in meeting, pitching, and networking, it may not be worth the time and expense.

This is actually a great improvement. I've developed a couple of applications on GAE, and it was very difficult to do anything non-trivial without generating "High CPU" warnings. I think once they get task scheduling in (part of their recent road map), the platform will become a lot more viable.

I think this is the key: "For me, trust and respect is driven by competence, but assumes a bi-directional loyalty."

Anyone who assumes a uni-directional loyalty in a business (or really any) relationship is asking for trouble. These days, I don't think many employees will assume a company is loyal to them, therefore their default behavior will not be loyalty toward their employer.

The whole startup/VC relationship, when done well, aligns interests such that bi-directional loyalty becomes more of a win-win. In the same vein, employees with equity are more likely to be in a "bi-directional loyalty" relationship with their employer.

I also like Brad's one-mulligan rule. It recognizes that one breach can be a mistake; two is a pattern

Umm, yeah, and unfettered capitalism does such a wonderful job of allocating resources. Government is terribly inefficient, but what other entity is going to maintain infrastructure, a social safety net, schools, and other basic services from which society benefits? I hate that so much money goes to DOD, TSA, farm subsidies, and the like, but reducing government revenues doesn't force the government to make tough choices, it simply causes it to run an even more unsustainable deficit.

By the way, if you lower taxes (and thus government revenue), it's not defense and corporate subsidies that suffer--they always get their piece--it's infrastructure and social programs. The "starve the beast" concept simply creates more suffering for those who can't afford things like private schools, expensive out-of-pocket health care, and jet time-shares.

Good point, although I think it was disingenuous of the author not to mention that interest rates are higher. I think that is clearly another type of "tightening."

Plus, you're ignoring the fact that there is a credit (which can be thought of as an exemption), which is different year-to-year, but not less than $1,000,000. I don't feel like going through all the details, but you can easily research this.

People need to read up on this stuff. There is a ton of FUD surrounding this issue.

Your heirs didn't earn that money, so they're only paying taxes once. You pay once for earning it, they pay once for "earning" it via your departure from this earth. But presumably if you have lots of money, you've already set up trusts, paid for college, given lifetime gifts, etc. so your heirs are already pretty far ahead of the average person.

Seems like a perfectly good way to encourage at least a tiny amount of wealth redistribution in a society where wealth is not very well distributed at all.