Derek Sivers is the founder of CDBaby. He is a musician that learned to program and build websites in his quest to promote his music. He sold CDBaby (sort of) for $22 million in 2008 and has a blog that touches on music, programming, business and some broader aspects of life. These are some of my favorite topics and I like the fact that he is able to weave all of those topics together so skillfully. His blog is worth sticking in your RSS reader and I wanted to bring your attention to one post in particular: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen. [Read more…] about Hiring Contract Programmers
The Twitter Engineering Blog
If you are technical minded, the The Twitter Engineering Blog is a fascinating read. I love seeing how others have handled tough technical problems. Twitter has had to solve a lot of them and I’m sure there are plenty more on the road that lies ahead, so the blog should be interesting.
Technical Support and Troubleshooting
In 2007 I did a one year stint providing technical support to our clients. During that time I put together a one page guide on support and troubleshooting to help other people. A little later that year, I spent time training in Kepner-Tregoe’s KT Resolve process. KT Resolve was a lot more in depth than what I came up with but similar in a couple of ways. I found KT Resolve to be a thorough process but too formal and heavy for most situations I encountered. [Read more…] about Technical Support and Troubleshooting
The Role of Luck in Hiring
I wrote the other day about some of the reasons why small teams of outstanding people might be more effective than larger teams of average people.
Maybe in a perfect world we could all agree. The rub though is that in practice, finding outstanding people and getting them to work for you can be tricky. [Read more…] about The Role of Luck in Hiring
Small Teams of Outstanding People
Thumbing through a copy of Revolutionizing IT: The Art of Using Information Technology Effectively, one thing was singled out as a core principle and repeated a couple of times:
A modest number of outstanding people are more valuable than a large number of average ones.
Office Life
Office life would not be possible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol.
@alaindebotton
Amen.