I was talking to somebody last week who had recently moved to San Francisco, and she randomly interjected Big Data into the conversation. She said she’d learned that’s what you do in SF – Big Data is a buzzword that can be used at any time on any topic. I found this amusing, because Big […]
Career development in the 21st century
It’s performance review time at Google, and that means that I am reassuring the young’uns in their mid-20s that it’s all going to be fine. They have been at the top of their class their entire life, they got into the best colleges, and they plan on continuing to ace every test they’re given. And […]
The Idea Factory, by Jon Gertner
Amazon link In light of my last post on the Anthropology of Innovation, it was apropos that I was just finishing The Idea Factory, by Jon Gertner, a history of Bell Labs and its impact on 20th century innovation. I actually also saw Gertner at the Computer History Museum in March, but had to wait […]
The Anthropology of Innovation panel
Last week, the Computer History Museum hosted a panel on “The Anthropology of Innovation”. I had to attend since I’m a fan of anthropology, I’m fascinated by corporate culture and how it leads to goals like innovation, and the panel featured Genevieve Bell of Intel, who Jofish and Janet interned with in Portland one summer. […]
The limits of rationality
I’ve started occasionally listening to Rationally Speaking podcast, a production of the New York City Skeptics. What’s funny is that part of the reason I listen to it is that I get into arguments (in my head) with the hosts of the show, who are dedicated to the idea that rationality will lead people to […]
Principled Leadership
I like thinking about how to scale a company without making it feel like a big company. The standard way to scale a company is to use hierarchy and process to manage the larger scale – big decisions get passed up the chain to an appropriate decision maker, and little decisions are handled by a […]
Encouraging useful failure
One particular issue I’ve been thinking about with startup vs. big company culture (and that is referred to in a comment on my last post as well as comments over on Facebook) is how to encourage useful failure – failure where you learn something and then apply what you learned to improve next time. This […]
Startup vs. big company culture
Since Larry Page became Google’s CEO again in April, his focus has been on “making a company of more than 24,000 employees act like a startup“. And because of my interest in mapping out organizational space and understanding the different ways in which people can organize themselves, I’ve been trying to figure out what, exactly, […]
Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi
Amazon link Matt Taibbi is angry. He is a Rolling Stone columnist who spent the last several years covering the financial crisis, and as an outside observer, is far more negative about the finance industry than anybody associated with it. Griftopia is a collection of columns and other research put together as a striking condemnation […]
Understanders vs. Fixers
I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about what we thrived on in a job, and it was interesting to see how our perspectives differed. She talked about the thrill of fixing a problem, of figuring out what was happening, and designing a process or system to solve the problem forever. […]
