Design. Spolsky. The Right Stuff: Building The Team. This is the last post in a series of three articles on Xobni’s launch.
Check out the first episode on the ideas behind Xobni, and the second post about the journey to building the right product. Co-written with Marie Baca. This is the story of how we are building Xobni's team and culture, and the things we've learned along the way. Engineers Rule. The Fear of Free Part 1: Corporations and Open-Source Software. Larry Page on how to change the world. (Fortune Magazine) -- As president of Google, Larry Page has pushed his people to take risks that have led to hot new applications like Gmail and Google Maps.
Lately he has been thinking far outside the walls of his company. Page sees a world of opportunity - in areas ranging from energy to safer cars. But he also sees a world of timidity; not enough people, he worries, are willing to place the big bets that could make a difference in meeting humanity's biggest challenges. Smart People should do Stupid Stuff. I was fortunate to attend Olin College of Engineering with some of the brightest minds in the country, and the bar of achievement was set high.
Inside the classroom, we worked on problems that were mind-numbingly complex and intricate. Outside of class, most students aimed to develop incredibly elaborate and technically innovative projects: Robots that swam across a pool like a tuna fish, machines that harvested oranges from a grove, or a new design for a surgical device. The projects I chose to work on during my time as an undergraduate were high-risk/high-reward.
I spent many nights using the Electron Scanning Microscope to image the nanostructure of Neluma Nucifera (the common Lilly pad). Startup Company Culture. Can you Identify programmers in an Interview? Not definitely gre. High-Tech Start-Ups Put Down Roots in New Soil. Looking to Hire an Engineer? 3 Reasons to Forgo the Phone Screen. If Sergey Brin applied for an engineering position at Google today, would he pass the requisite phone screening?
Don’t be so sure: While he might look good on paper, he’d probably have to brush up on his Python programming skills first. Even if he passed, would it tell his potential employer anything useful about the value he could bring to the company? Most engineers are familiar with the initial phone interview: a short, technical interview prepared by the prospective employer, and used to verify that the programmer meets the minimum technical qualifications of the job. Lots of employers think these screenings are a quick way to weed out bad engineers, but personally, I refuse to do them. Here are three reasons those looking to hire the best engineers should reconsider the “phone screen” interview altogether and jump right to a full-length phone or in-person interview:
Why hiring is paradoxically harder in a downturn. Noise goes up but the quality stays the same Hiring is always hard.
Why Iteration is a Powerful Way to Build a Startup. Getting things right straight off the bat is no simple task. It’s the reason writers write drafts. 17 Mistakes start-ups make. John Osher, a serial entrepreneur who launched several successful companies (notoriously, Cap Toys with sales of $125 million per year and sold it to Hasbro Inc. in 1997 ), came up with an informal list of “16 Mistakes Start-Ups Make” – since expanded to 17 – where he put every blunder and error he made during his entrepreneurial career. Ever since, this list has been used in Harvard Business School case studies and in many business publications. He also used the list in 1999 – he wanted to build a company and product deprived of all his previous blunders – when he started SpinBrush, $5 electric toothbrush (hitherto costing circa $80), which he sold to P&G for $475 million in 2001. Below is his “17 mistakes start-ups make” list: And finally, one of the commenters on this article, Trevas from eBookGuru, suggested an essential mistake which causes many (which have inexperienced founders) of startups fail (and is not explicitly present among the 17 mistakes above). 18.
Running a microISV. Consumers and businesses are being more careful with their money now, but they are still buying software if it will save them time and/or money.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Eccentric Programmer/Genius. I recently posted about a set of programmer personality traits that I’d noticed. How to run a software development company (INTO THE GROUND) Ten Web Startups to Watch. Instant VoicingSend voice messages without calling, and listen to them from a phone–or a laptop.By Larry Aragon Company: Pinger Founding date: 2005 Funding amount: $11 million Worldwide, people sent 1.9 trillion text messages last year.
Lessons Learned “Selling” My Micro-ISV. If you're trying to grow your startup you've come to the right place.
Get my 170-page ebook on how to grow a startup and join thousands of self-funded entrepreneurs by subscribing to my newsletter at right. Those of you following the chronicles of my ASP.NET billing product know that I purchased it about 16 months ago and after putting in hundreds of hours cleaning up the code and growing revenue, I offered it for sale to free up time for this blog and pursue another potential opportunity (that has since gone by the wayside, as these things are apt to do). Within a week of my “for sale” post I received 20 email inquiries, sent out nearly that many NDAs, distributed 13 sales packets (including a detailed description of the product with all the relevant data, and a Google Analytics PDF) to those who returned signed NDAs, and spent about 10 hours answering questions via email. The third was something I hadn’t expected. Your Employees Are Dying to Be Heard.
Developer Incompetence, an analysis. There has been some debate recently about the nature of incompetence, which quickly is followed by comments on sites such as Reddit into a debate about whether offshore developers are more incompetent that onshore developers.
I think this is largely missing the point. I believe global levels of competence and incompetence to be largely equal. The reason offshore development services have a bad reputation is entirely justified, they produce bad code, we've all seen it, but it's the reasons why that people's ideas rapidly separate. Offshore software shops don't produce bad code because of genetic or cultural deficiencies of whichever country they're based in; they produce bad code for two reasons: 1) they know they're competing on cost, not quality (although their sales pitch will say different); and 2) they know that, very often, the client will accept whatever crap they're given.
There are many talented developers in these distant places. Hard interview questions. Full Color Printing: Business Cards. Multipart/mixed: Why I'm Not a [Insert Language Here] Progr. I have over a decade of professional C++ experience, but I don't call myself a "C++ Programmer. " Am I competent with programming in C++? Yes, very much so. But I refuse to let my skills be pigeon-holed by the language I've historically used. Nor should you. Use the right tool for the job, the saying goes, and software development is no exception.
Hiring the Rowing-Forward 30% Computing ThoughtsHiring the Rowing-Forward 30%by Bruce EckelApril 16, 2008 Summary A business owner at a workshop I held made the very disturbing comment that he thought that 70% of programmers were "rowing backward," doing things that you had to fix in order to keep the boat moving in the forward direction.
This person had created a software tool company of about 25 people that he later sold to a much larger company. 36 Startup Tips: From Software Engineering to PR and More! - Rea. This is a collection of startup tips covering software engineering, infrastructure, PR, conferences, legal and finance. They describe best practices for an early-stage startup. How to Build Good Credit for Your Business.