Shonzilla, a pattern-seeking animal

Sat Dec 19

juliasegal:

Christmas Eve…

He’s not the only one feeling grumpy about Christmas frenzy.

Wed Oct 14

How companies keep their employees motivated

This short options menu is short but pretty much sums up the options for Google which is suffering from the biggest brain drain so far in 2009.

Its worth emphasizing: you can replace Google with company X (say, your company’s name) and Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL with A, B and C (i.e. competitor companies’ names).

How does Google continue to keep the troops motivated and excited about their career prospects? A few options spring to mind:

Endorse title inflation in Google: This is the Yahoo route — if you can’t make all those managers into directors and directors into VPs based on numbers, at least do some social promotion so people think they’re moving up, even if their span of control hasn’t changed. Senior Engineers can become Architects in droves. They’re all smart people who in any other company would qualify, so who are we hurting here? The main thing that limits this is the peer review process. Prisoner’s Dilemma here.

Throw some money at training away the problem: This is the Microsoft route. Don’t tell people no, tell them they need to complete some complex multi-stage training program, and let that program lead them around in circles for a few years. During the process, pluck a few people left and right to keep the rest of the herd motivated, but effectively keep the misdirection up long enough so people feel they’re making progress even when they’re not. Bonus: some of that training might help mature the culture some.

Get radically honest and accept the fallout: This is the AOL route — we’re telling the overachievers that they’re not going to get to be a SVP soon and probably ever, and if they quit they quit. Backfill as appropriate with less driven, more status-quo people who can keep the peace and won’t be agitating for promotions you can’t give them. Sound harsh? Remember, the business is growing slower, and shuffling out some of the edgy risky people might be appropriate. There are plenty of A talent who’ve had a family and don’t want to work 80 hours a week any more who might be happy to be a Director for 15 years if it meant they could take off to be at their kids T-ball game. Hire those people to replace the guys who want a shiny new title every 6 months.

Thanks to the pseudo-anonymous commenter Sam Southie. I’ve quoted his comment and also an answer posed in the article from BusinessInsider - “How To Stop The Google Brain Drain”:

[via BusinessInsider]

Sat Mar 21

Goodbye Google

This link makes an interesting read where Doug Bowman, the (ex) lead visual designer at Google, explains why he has left the company.

In a nutshell, Google has a data fetish and it’s hard to blame them. All that data crunching got them where they are today.

apparently tired Doug Bowman, lead visual designer at Google

Mr. Bowman apparently got tired of all that data-driven decision making that completely wiped out the subjective (what’s creative and visionary in user experience design I would say) from top designer’s work. Unofficially, Bowman is heading for greener and more exciting design pastures, like those at Twitter, which I believe is the best candidate for being the new Google… of social media… that is becoming mainstreeam. Doug promises to disclose his new employer in a followup blog post.

Apparently, Google does not know how to deal with designers, and I’m not thinking of the software designer kind (those should be called software engineers anyway). The root of the problem seems to have been in the fact that Google has not highly ranked designers until 7 (yes, seven!) years after the company was founded. Sure, it may have not been a problem for a company that was known for the same simple welcome page for almost as many years. The problem can be seen in the CS PhD-like data-obsessed culture that has formed along the way.

Among many nice things and experience he has had at Google, Doug concludes by stating that he “[…] won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.”

Adam Howell, another designer who left Google wrote in his post Google’s “designer drain”: “Test driven design certainly has a huge place on the web — but it has to coexist with opinionated design.” Amen! This is one of the points where Google and Apple differ a lot. Apart from the reality-distorting field of Steve Jobs’ vision and its killer combination with industrial design (Jonathan Ive) and execution (Apple engineers), Apple has a common design vision that drives the design of all Apple products and services. On the other, Google is diversifying ever so more, occasionally acquiring companies and it seems to be too hard to create and implement an all-encompassing design vision.

It’s time to ask: Should Google to (finally) shift gears? Seems that they should loosen up their elbows, ruffle their ~~plumage~~ hairdos and get more creative while maintaining the technical edge it definitely has in the several fields of the immensely relevant internet medium.

Wed Mar 18

Lost Generation

The power of words when you put them in the right order… Think about these!

[via metroamv]

Wed Jan 28

10 Careers in Demand for 2009 - PayScale Resources

Phew! During 2009, The Year of Recession, being a software developer is still a viable career choice. :-)

Software Design/Development Careers. Companies from all sectors of the economy are looking for software engineers and programmers, says Turnquist. This is because society in general is becoming more tech-dependent - just think of how rapidly cell phones change with each passing year - requiring software developers that can stay abreast of all the changes.
Median Yearly Salary - $72,070

Wed Dec 10

Are you looking over yourself and your career?

[via fubiz]