Tag: management

The Three Machines

It’s amazing how well-timed this article is for the things that go on around me right now.  But even if you are not spending most of your days, nights, and weekends building a company at this moment, have a go at it anyway.   Here’s a bit to get you started:

My current hypothesis is that if you are a CEO, focus your organization on the three machines. Product, Customer, and Company. Then, have a direct report own one of them. If you have a sub-scale leadership team (e.g. you are three founders and four other employees), as CEO you can own one, but not more than one. As you get bigger (probably greater than 20 employees), hopefully now you have enough leadership to have one person own each, but recognize that if someone is being ineffective as a leader of one of the machines, you will have to replace them in that role (either by firing them or re-assigning them).

 

Is It Worth the Time?

I’ve seen this chart before, but completely forgot where it was from.  Tried to find it a couple of times in a hurry of a conversation, but couldn’t.  Thanks to this SysAdvent blog post, I now have it permanently engraved into the archives of my blog.

xkcd figured out how long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you’re spending more time than you save.  The crossing of how much time you shave off and how often you do the task gets progressively less obvious when move from the top left corner of this char to the bottom right corner.

Why Some People Get Promoted (And Others Don’t)

I enjoyed reading the article “Why Some People Get Promoted (And Others Don’t)“.  Unlike many other in this domain, it is simple, direct, and to the point.  TLDR version:

  1. Do great things.
  2. Tell people.

There are quite a few links to external resources, with research and insightful quotes.  Here are a couple of my favorite bits:

‘[S]ent does not mean received’ is a profound thing. Half of your job in this studio is doing your work, the other half of your job is communicating that it’s been done. Because if you do it, and I don’t hear about it, how do I know what’s going on? I’m not trying to control everything, but in an intimate work environment, where we’re really trying to develop something complex, a nod, saying, ‘I got it,’ helps move things along.

And this part, which resonates with my inner blogger:

Asking for help is part of getting better at your job.

3. Work where people can see you.

Gaining visibility might require going outside your office. Maybe you have a side project, or maybe your work culture isn’t a healthy environment to pursue visibility.

Promoting yourself doesn’t have to be on someone else’s terms. Write a book, start a blog, make a side-project, collaborate with new people outside of work, or speak at panels and conferences. Tell people about what you’ve done, what you’re doing, why it’s important, and how you did it. Give talks, teach others, raise your hand for new projects.

How To Keep Your Best Programmers

I really liked this article – How To Keep Your Best Programmers.  It’s not your average three paragraphs and a link, I admit. It’s somewhat of a long read.  But it does a good job of explaining why people in general, and good developers in particular choose to leave or stay in the company.

It’s difficult to quote as it flows continuously, but if I had to choose, I’d use this as a teaser:

For some background, check out this video from RSA Animate. The video is great watching, but if you haven’t the time, the gist of it is that humans are not motivated economically toward self-actualization (as widely believed) but are instead driven by these three motivating factors: the desire to control one’s own work, the desire to get better at things, and the desire to work toward some goal beyond showing up for 40 hours per week and collecting a paycheck.

Frustration with organizational stupidity is usually the result of a lack of autonomy and the perception of no discernible purpose.

Not that I am a good programmer, but it helped me understand some of my own career jumps…