maxxxxx

I am not kidding. Most seem to be resigned to the fact that it’s 12 or 16 and that’s close enough. Also nobody knows how many cups are in a pack of flour so buying something for a recipe is hard too.

You also need to give people the chance to make mistakes and learn from them. I don’t envy a lot of the young developers who get micromanaged all the time and never have a chance to try something.

There was an effort in the 70s that got shut down by the Reagan administration.

When I did a little home improvement project I always thought what a PITA it is to multiply 5 and 3/8 inches seven times. Let alone divide that number by 3. Metric is so much easier.

The imperial system is a problem in daily life. Most of my American friends don’t know how many ounces are in a pound or how many teaspoons in a tablespoon. This makes price comparison at shopping very difficult and cooking is also harder. Sure you can survive but imperial is just an incredibly inefficient system.

Totally agree. Talking about culture or hanging up "inspirational" posters is usually a warning sign. Good organizations live their values and don't feel a need to constantly talk about them.

What you are describing is exactly what Agile should be. You have a team of people who care about the craft and they slowly improve processes based on real world feedback and experience. If something doesn't work you drop it and try something else. This happens in environments where people respect each other.

From a business point of view Ballmer did an excellent job. The company grew every year and was always one of the top tech companies. The same will probably happen to Apple (and Google) too. They magic touch goes away but they will be solid companies run by business people.

I think Apple’s problem will be that Jobs usually had a very good feeling which radical change will get accepted and which won’t. The current Apple will probably listen to customer feedback but I doubt they will be able to release game changers like iPod or iPhone.

The lack of involvement is generally a problem in companies. Not only with reorganizations but also with things like remodeling of the workplace. Instead of getting feedback from the people who eventually have to sit in that space management usually closes itself off and doesn’t explain the reasons. Once it’s done you will see a self congratulatory email how great things will be.

that was years ago. I don't remember when. It also didn't last long.

That doesn't explain why inequality within the US keeps growing. As a whole the country is doing well but somehow the benefits go a small number of people while everybody else is stagnating.

Blame it on the "old people" but you soon you will see that "young people" will pull the same nonsense as soon as they have to hit quarterly numbers. Big companies can't be your friend.

It feels like most answers on this site come from robots or from moderators who barely know anything. I still have to see a good, on point, answer there from someone who really knows things.

Other than "We’ve also had a combination of tax and regulatory policy that has encouraged capital formation and increasing returns to capital, so labor’s share of returns has decreased. The last round of tax policy out of Washington made this worse." it seems they have nothing concrete to say. I definitely agree that capital should be taxed at the same rates as labor. Maybe there was a time when it made sense to tax capital lower but right now we don't seem to lack investment money but we lack demand.

I worked with a German version of VBA for a little while. MS soon gave up on this but it was a really weird experience.

And others will copy this pattern without knowing why. so quickly you have these weird patterns all over your code.

Wasn't Galileo first to observe them with his telescope or were they mentioned somewhere before? I assume back then the skies were darker and people probably had better eyes so if they are observable I would assume somebody would have mentioned them.

“What I don't know is: am I just wrong about this, or are you, or is it just pure subjective preference? ”

Yes. It’s subjective. It probably also depends on the people you work with and the nature of the things you are working on.

It seems everything around heath care billing is sneaky in the US. It's probably the most rotten, inefficient and corrupt sector of the whole economy. I am not talking about the actual health care but only about billing practices.

I hate "meetings" but I am big fan of conversation. When I worked in a team room with 3 other engineers we just naturally had good conversations from time to time. There was no schedule, no agenda, no start or end time. But we solved a lot of things that way. I also chat with my manager several times a week about stuff. I feel if there is a need to schedule formal one-on-one meetings it indicates a dysfunctional environment.

These books usually describe a very idealized version of the real world. I think the only way to find out what mid level managers do is to ask them or ideally to shadow them for a few days.

I think shadowing other roles would generally be very beneficial in a lot of companies so people understand each other better. I have had a lot of occasions where I basically thought that some role is useless until I worked with them and found out what they have to put up with the whole day.

"The windows are small, and covered in metal bars or thick metal meshing."

That's one thing I don't get in the US. The schools really look like prisons. Why not have windows and daylight?

At a minimum when an employee gets punished we should also take a close look at the chain of command and work environment. Very often it's the executives setting up a dysfunctional environment where it's hard for the little guy to do the right thing. I work at a medical device company and my standards definitely go down sometimes when there is too much deadline pressure. It's a very subtle decline of morale and quality that happens over time.

I think he just needed people like Jobs and others to keep him in check. With Cook at the top I would expect more business people to run the show who don’t have much input in the product.

Damn! That's a BIG drone. Should have read closer but now I see 450kg. MSL is like a small car.

I would guess you can't take much instrumentation on a drone so a rover has advantages there. Anyway, I am excited about this.

That's what this is. It's much easier to heat something in the cold of Titan than to cool something in the heat of Venus.

Gravity is a b..ch :-)

No 4K flyovers for Instagram?