stack ranking actively hinders managers from retaining exceptional performers. if you only have 2 A grades to give out and you have five people deserving of it ALL of them are going to be motivated to switch to lower performing teams or entirely new employers.
any sort of 'objective' evaluation of employees is prone to being gamed and any gaming of evaluation is actively harmful to corporate culture/performance. witness google where lower profile or troubled projects are abandoned en masse by any employees with the ability to turn them around
At that point, I would just drop the person who I dislike the most to the bottom of the bucket. After all, as a manager, I have no choice but to fill that slot, and given every-one has performed well on the job, what other heuristic can I use to select the "bottom 2"?
Or I may drop the person who I can get rid of with the least hassle, maybe the new guy who just joined the team or someone who has taken long leave during this period.
See how it works? Nothing to do with performance, and inevitably its the "A" performers who quit in disgust. And companies wonder why they cannot get talent to stay...
none of these companies are leveraging truly novel patents in their lawsuits. few of these companies are even generating novel patents. they're all accumulating (likely bogus) patents to wield as a club against their competitors. the theory was mutual assured destruction would keep all parties in line but Intellectual Ventures pioneered tactical patent strikes that forced all players into an ever escalating cycle of violence. now they're all just scrambling trying to stay ahead. put simply, it's sue or be sued
it sucks, but until there's meaningful patent reform, it's how things are going to be
That is by far the most despicable cliché I know. You choose which games to play and how to play them. The whole point of having principles is that sometimes you do things that aren’t optimal game strategies.
For example, you choose not to murder your business competitors. You choose not to sell products that kill your customers. Do we let tobacco executives off the hook because they’re just “playing the game?” How about the cocaine cartel?
A gentle way to put it is, “This is a false dichotomy. Hate them both."
They are temporary because they are granted for situations where Apple has not yet implemented an API or formalized an entitlement. Apple bends over backwards to be developer friendly, they are not going to pull the rug out just for the hell of it.
The new 'iOS' which is still surprisingly developer friendly, despite the attitude it receives on forums such as HN.
iOS, for all of it's failings and deficiencies, still offers one of the finest – if not the finest – development and distribution platforms in the world.
Yes, it's not open. Yes, it's restrictive. Yes, it's censored.
But, perhaps, those qualities are some qualities that make it the most successful software sales vector we've ever seen.
I agree it's not perfect. But to say it's not developer friendly is quite disingenuous. The iOS development toolchain is actually quite powerful and flexible (though still faulty), the distribution mechanism is broad and simple (though restrictive and censoring), and I can't think of a single other platform, including the web, that has been as developer friendly. At least for developers who wish to make an income. (Something about which I admit, without any bit of judgement, some developers aren't concerned.)
I'm sorry, but making people pay $100 to develop on systems they own is not developer-friendly. I would much rather they had NO apis and we were allowed to access the hardware we bought.
Oh yes, I get all warm and fuzzy every time I think of how friendly Apple is to developers... ummm, are you crazy?
How friendly is a company that uses secret APIs to compete with you? How friendly is a company that rips off your software and then kicks you out of their app store? Gimme a break...
i think the point is that when designing clocks we didn't just attach some gears and a timing mechanism and some hands to a sundial, we threw the sundial out. computers are complex because we hardly ever remove anything, and we still bare their cost aeons after they're relevant.
Yeah but clocks generally don't interface with other technology. Trailer hitches and screw drivers do. There is a whole slew of different hitch adapters. And, most of us have or at least have seen screw drivers with a set of attachable bits.
if google gives privileged access to android to motorola (earlier access to os builds for testing, for example), that's just going to motivate samsung, htc, sony etc to differentiate further, as they will have a disadvantage in time to market
Nobody is advocating that Motorola get early access, just that they don't waste time building custom UIs on top of stock Android.
If Google ships the OS code to all partners (including Motorola) at the same time and Motorola just worries about getting the OS running on their hardware while everyone else worries about that plus porting their own custom UI toolkits over, that's a win for Motorola, but not because they got the code any sooner.
The win is due to the other partners wasting time competing on something that most users don't care about or if they do, actually prefer stock Android, at least IME and at least since 2.2. Earlier versions of Android than 2.2 actually had some UI warts worth fixing but now the custom UIs are generally inferior to stock and exist pretty much solely due to inertia against abandoning them and company politics, IMO.
If the hardware manufacturers really want to differentiate themselves they should do so via hardware, form-factors, novel input methods (like the Galaxy Note) and add-ons (like Playstation compatibility in Sony's case), not by messing with the core UI.
i don't work at valve, but i work at an organisation with a very similar management structure (there is none) and payment scheme (autonomous self organizing teams are paid by clients and distribute payments as negotiated by the group). we have virtually zero overhead and minimal residual or recurring income so we are not identical to valve, but their employee handbook could very easily be ours
we have a number of 'bad apples', but they generally find themselves ostracized very quickly. as we have no downside income guarantees (we are organized as a group of independent contractors), people very quickly fall out of the organisation
i assume valve accomplish similar by minimizing payments to individuals who act in bad faith. as they are probably primarily financially motivated and valve is likely a great entry on a cv, i'm sure they don't stick around long
That is incredibly interesting. If you're uncomfortable saying who you work for in public, please contact me. I would love to understand more about your organization and put it on my list of potential companies to hire.
serious question, do people not realize you can use the wireless apple keyboard with the ipad? it pairs with bluetooth and it's fairly small of it's own accord. it's also much cheaper than most of these 'laptop' accessories
This. The Apple wireless keyboard solution adds no baggage to the iPad itself, is very portable, and the compact height of the keyboard allows stacking the keyboard and iPad vertically on your lap or flat surface (meaning touch gestures don't require holding your arm up).
Personally, I use the virtual keyboard exclusively. I find it a nice change of pace. Somewhat similar to how the thought process seems to change when writing with paper and pencil, compared to hammering away at a physical keyboard.
diamonds aren't artificially scarce to control demand, they're artificially scarce due to low demand. bringing a gigantic chunk of platinum to earth isn't going to increase the utility of platinum, although if prices fall far enough it may increase the utilization
you can't fix sexism (or racism, or classism) by pretending they don't exist. this isn't the venue for a debate on the topic, but you can read up on male privilege if you'd like to know more
any sort of 'objective' evaluation of employees is prone to being gamed and any gaming of evaluation is actively harmful to corporate culture/performance. witness google where lower profile or troubled projects are abandoned en masse by any employees with the ability to turn them around