Sapere Aude
Tag: business
the exact same product in pink costs significantly more. it’s crazy that this kind of nonsense is still going on, enabled by dumb consumers.
Radio Flyer sells a red scooter for boys and a pink scooter for girls. Both feature plastic handlebars, 3 wheels and a foot brake. The only significant difference is the price. Target listed one for $24.99 and the other for $49.99.
bros will be bros
In the chocolate community, the suspicions of remelting began early. The Mast Brothers’ original bars had a taste and texture that was too much like the palate-friendly kind available at the drugstore to be truly “bean to bar,” Scott explains in his first post. Bean-to-bar chocolate has a distinctive taste that, like wine, ties it to its origin, and craft chocolate makers use minimal processing to retain that taste.
this is very obvious: tons of companies waste time on “conference calls” that go nowhere, spend most of their energy in politics, and are full of 9-5 DMV types. what’s surprising is that all these companies don’t go out of business, which suggests that competition isn’t nearly as fierce of a force as claimed.
longer term, this will be an AI arm race of sales bots battling user bots.
Comcast cancellation is just the beginning for AirPaper, whose stated mission is to make bureaucracy “surprisingly pleasant.” Next the startup wants to tackle San Francisco parking permit and business tax registration, as well as the visa application process for visiting China.
Millions of Swifties and KatyCats—as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy—would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high % of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America’s pop hits
i’ve known many of the type.
The annual performance review has been falling out of favor in some quarters. Microsoft and Gap are among several companies that have reformed their evaluation processes in recent years. Accenture, an emblem of traditional corporate culture if ever there was one, announced that it is getting rid of annual evaluations for its 360k employees, replacing the process with a system where managers will give feedback on a more regular basis. The existing evaluations are cumbersome and expensive. “the outcome is not great.”
someone at canon made sure to implement support for preventing the scanner from working when the ink in the combined printer – scanner is low. all hail the razor blades business model.
This is highly amusing and you can send it to your tech-illiterate friends.
You consult a spreadsheet and remind him that the Oracle contract was renewed a few months ago. So, no, actually, at least for now, you’ll keep eating that cost. Sigh. This man makes a third less than you, and his education ended with a B.S. from a large, perfectly fine state university. But he has 500+ connections on LinkedIn. That plus sign after the “500” bothers you. How many more than 500 people does he know? 5? 5000?
In some mysterious way, he outranks you. Not within the company, not in restaurant reservations, not around lawyers. Still: He strokes his short beard; his hands are tanned; he hikes; his socks are embroidered with little ninja.
“Don’t forget, we’ve got to budget for apps.” This is real. A Scrum Master in ninja socks has come into your office and said, “We’ve got to budget for apps.” Should it all go pear-shaped, his career will be just fine.
You keep your work in perspective by thinking about barrels of cash. You once heard that a US dry barrel can hold about $100K worth of singles. Next year, you’ll burn a little under 1 barrel of cash on Oracle. 1 barrel isn’t that bad. But it’s never 1 barrel. Is this a 5-barrel project or a 10-barreler? More? Too soon to tell. But you can definitely smell money burning.
At this stage in the meeting, you like to look supplicants in the eye and say, OK, you’ve given me a date and a budget. But when will it be done? Really, truly, top-line-revenue-reporting finished? Come to confession; unburden your soul.
This time you stop yourself. You don’t want your inquiry to be met by a patronizing sigh of impatience or another explanation about ship dates, Agile cycles, and continuous delivery. Better for now to hide your ignorance. When will it be done? You are learning to accept that the answer for software projects is never.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 