Tag: culture

Power in a distributed organization vs traditional

Chris Hardie, who works for Automattic, shares his observations on where the power in a distributed organization comes from, versus the traditional one.

In an office setting, I see power and influence gather around…

  • The person with the newest, coolest and/or most expensive clothing
  • The person with the larger corner office
  • The person with the most assistants
  • The person with the most impressive sounding title
  • The person with the closest parking space
  • The oldest, richest, whitest males
  • The person who’s allowed to create or interrupt meetings
  • The person with the most impressive social and public-speaking skills
  • The person who uses their power to get what they want

In a distributed organization, I see power and influence gather around…

  • The person who produces output and solutions that exceed expectations
  • The person who can connect deeply with colleagues over a distance
  • The person who can effectively and concisely articulate their own views and ideas
  • The person who helps their coworkers be the best versions of themselves
  • The person generous with their understanding of how to navigate the organization’s processes and culture
  • The person who can give voice to unrecognized or unspoken truths
  • The person who learns fastest from their mistakes
  • The person who uses their power to empower others

It’s of course not fair to generalize this way. There are healthy traditional organizations where appearances are not necessarily the basis for power. There are probably unhealthy distributed organizations where power centers around the appearance of lots of activity that produces few good outcomes. But my experience so far is that a distributed organizational structure inherently facilitates an experience of power, empowerment and leadership that is better for the people in it, and for the work they are doing together.

I don’t have much experience working for a distributed organization, but judging by many Open Source projects, which are, in essence, distributed organizations, I’m inclined to agree with the above observations.  I wouldn’t be able to put in words so well though.

Imagine the world without Muslims

This is one of those things that I love about the Internet.  When you are wrong, the Internet doesn’t just gently mention it.  It absolutely destroys you, shoving the reality so hard down your throat, you forget how to breath for a while.  And then, next time, if you haven’t killed yourself yet, you think long and hard before saying anything out loud.  If you have a half a brain or more, of course.

Continue reading Imagine the world without Muslims

Programming and Greek

One thought that cracks me up every now and then is about Greek programmers.  In Greek language, instead of a question mark a semicolon is used.

Greek

In many programming languages, a semicolon is used to represent the end of statement.  So, this:

$a = $b + $c;
print $a;

to Greek programmers must be looking like this:

$a = $b + $c?
print $a?

I don’t know about you, but to me this would be a constant confidence issue.  It’s almost like I’m not sure what I’m going and asking the computer to confirm.

I’m sure though they have their ways of working around this …

By the way, while reading through the Wikipedia article linked above, I thought that the possible origins of the question mark were quite interesting:

questio

 

That would also explain why not all the languages are using the question mark character.

Easter in Cyprus

For those of you not fortunate enough to live in Cyprus, here is a glimpse at how Easter (and other major holidays like … Sundays) are celebrated in Cyprus villages.

easter

The photo comes from this article (in Greek) which (to the best of my knowledge) tries to warn people about buying meat from non-certified butchers.  Well, guess what, all certified butchers were probably emptied out anyway.