As only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.And came up with the same conclusions everyone else has known for decades.
"In the Google context, we'd always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you," Mr. Bock says. "Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible."Managers need to be good at management and have people skills? Who woulda thunk?
The former FCC chairman who fifty years ago called television a "vast wasteland" proposes a strategy for protecting public interest in the world of the Internet.
"There seems to be a disconnect between what the Fed is saying and what people are experiencing when they fill up their gas tanks or read about rising food prices around the world."Gas just hit $4.00 a gallon at a few of the gas stations I pass daily. Not necessarily a sign of inflation, but it doesn't make me feel good.
Speaking of average...
In a series of studies using humor, grammar, and logic, researchers Justin Kruger and David Dunning demonstrated that people who score the lowest in actual skill rankings tend to drastically overestimate their abilities.
Most programmers have only a vague notion of how competent they are at what they do for a living.
When you don't compete, per se, what drives you to be better?
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My Spitfire through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy skills
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
There is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God's heart. God meant something when he meant man.
— John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
Many losers actually prefer blaming themselves over recognizing the superior skill of another person.
And many people try to tear down the one who is better, instead of attempting to be better themselves.
Increasingly, the motivations of writers and the motivations of the businesses they work for are at odds with each other. Journalists, enabled by the web, are increasingly defining success according to exposure, and news organizations are increasingly defining success according to the limitation of exposure.
Publishers are trying to artificially create scarcity in an ecosystem based on exposure.
My immediate response was to try to log into the server and see if there was anything I could to do keep it from falling over.
Sounds kinda like what we do at work, too. Great article on the Delicious -> Pinboard exodus and a lesson on why you should always stress test.