Latest stats on the US Economy, written up about by Andrew McAfee. He posits the fact that unemployment's not going up while other economic stats are might be due to greater IT spend -- technology replacing labour? Seeing what I've seen in my half decade in the workforce I can't say I disagree: too many... Continue Reading →
The importance of domain knowledge for a business analyst
I was part of team working on an analytics project that sought strong reasons to back up a major business decision, but found myself contributing much less than I’d have wanted to. It wasn’t technical ability that I was lacking in. Rather, it was a distinct lack of industry/business knowledge that bottlenecked my value. I’m... Continue Reading →
Risk vs. Uncertainty (Part II): The Secure Print & Scan Edition
I remember once talking to a friend in HR who lamented the fact that her office didn’t have a way to securely scan or print documents. Because she worked in a department with highly sensitive data, I thought that it was strange it wasn’t made available to her. I recommended that she put in a... Continue Reading →
Getting Real by 37Signals
In what must be one of the most serendipituous moments of my recent life I hit upon 37Signals' Getting Real TOC page after doing a search of a string of text that randomly entered my mind. (The whole book's available online for free? Wow!) I'd first read Getting Real in its physical form (borrowed from a local... Continue Reading →
On Making Plans
There's a saying attributed to Woody Allen: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." The first time I'd seen it, it made me laugh. Not because it was funny (though it was), but because it was true. It was a nervous laugh. Here's another quote from the book Rework, written by Jason... Continue Reading →
Exceptional talent is about hard work
Saw an article by Entrepreneur.com on Facebook about a section in Robert Greene's book, talking about how exceptional talent is about hard work: He says that there is no such thing as being born into superior success. Rather, those politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, athletes and artists who rise above the rest in their field, achieving what... Continue Reading →
Nobody tells this to beginners – Ira Glass
A great quote from Ira Glass: Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying... Continue Reading →
A quote on salary negotiation
There is a great passage on salary negotiation from the book Purple Squirrel by Michael B. Junge, that reminds that in salary negotiation, it's useful to think multiple steps ahead of your next move, knowing that in a relationship winning the salary negotiation battle is not winning the career war. Traditional negotiation works in the context of... Continue Reading →
Statistics do not always tell the whole story
I'm not sure if you've read or heard about the recent unfavourable review of the Tesla Model S by New York Times reporter John Broder, but if you haven't, you should. Not because of the review itself, which was newsworthy in possibly putting a large dent in the credibility of the Model S as an... Continue Reading →
Mark Cuban writes a compelling article on how owning a sports team (in his case the NBA's Dallas Mavericks) is different from owning a regular company. Worth the read. Makes you wonder: what if I could start a company that could positively influence lives like that?
Donn, fragments 