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Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

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Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#81

Post by timsally »

jaredsohn wrote: post #39
harryf wrote: post #11

I wonder if Steve needs to move to marketing? He's done an awesome job here of highlighting one massive difference between GPlus and Facebook - that you can really publish publicly to the whole world, the way the web was intended.

This isn't a difference; you can do the same on Facebook. Here are a couple of examples: via a Facebook page called 'notes': http://www.facebook.com/notes/web20/robert-scoble-on-cloud-c... via user Scoble's wall: http://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/posts/10150358391274655 . No Facebook account needed to view either.

Notes have been around for 5+ years and I've never seen them linked as news stories. In contrast, I've seen Google+ updates consistently submitted as news to HN and other sources. There is a significant difference between Google+ updates and Facebook Notes and it's worth thinking about why. I suspect it has to do with the fact that status updates and public posting in Google+ are the same interface. For Facebook, status updates are character limited and you have to click into the Notes tab in order to write something longer.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#82

Post by [deleted] »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #78
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you suggest you convey true emotions through words while being diplomatic? As we both agree 'considered' posts can eliminate the true feeling. I do not think only anger can be conveyed. I am not being specific about this very situation. And I agree that being diplomatic can be more effective most times. Edited: To provide contest for question.

I don't think considered posts do eliminate the true feeling. They eliminate the visceral, immediate reaction but that's only one part of the truth. If you're angry (or happy) at someone that's certainly a true feeling but is it any truer than the way you feel 10 minutes later when you've calmed down a bit and considered things? If a colleague irritates me and I shout at him sure that's a representation of part of wh…

[deleted]

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#83

Post by OoTheNigerian »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #78
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you suggest you convey true emotions through words while being diplomatic? As we both agree 'considered' posts can eliminate the true feeling. I do not think only anger can be conveyed. I am not being specific about this very situation. And I agree that being diplomatic can be more effective most times. Edited: To provide contest for question.

I don't think considered posts do eliminate the true feeling. They eliminate the visceral, immediate reaction but that's only one part of the truth. If you're angry (or happy) at someone that's certainly a true feeling but is it any truer than the way you feel 10 minutes later when you've calmed down a bit and considered things? If a colleague irritates me and I shout at him sure that's a representation of part of wh…

If you're angry (or happy) at someone that's certainly a true feeling but is it any truer than the way you feel 10 minutes later when you've calmed down a bit and considered things?

You have made great sense and raised a thought provoking questuion here.

Ultimately though I think you have to ask yourself what am I try to achieve, how is what I'm going to say going to achieve that and am I happy..."

You have summed it up perfectly.

Combining your two statements above is quite an insight. A great one. Thanks :)

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#84

Post by earlyresort »

mkeshav wrote: post #63
gaius wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a good leader end up with a bad team? That's worth understanding.

Is a team of donkeys lead by a lion better than a team of lions lead by a donkey?

On a team of lions, the donkey is lunch.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#85

Post by kanwisher »

bigbird wrote: post #71
ovi256 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you're way over-optimistic if you think the 1% has the kind of intelligence (and I'm not talking pure IQ) and focus Bezos has. Bezos is more like 0.01%. And I'd venture to say that the OWS movement wouldn't have much against Bezos. They're more against fratboys that rose to prominence and wealth through connections. And finance. Yeah, definitely finance. It's there that they sense some kind of unwarranted…

Bezos started out on "Wall St", working at D.E. Shaw in NYC.

D.E Shaw was starting Internet startups in the early 90s, Bezos pitched them Amazon and they did Netzero instead so he headed west

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#86

Post by Goladus »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #70
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that anger often sounds more authentic but anyone who has ever been angry will testify that what you say when you're angry (or even just irritated) doesn't necessarily reflect your actual view, just one facet of it. Yegge's original piece was making a specific point and he came out with examples that supported that but that doesn't mean that those examples represent Yegge's overall view of Bezos and it…

So how do you suggest you convey true emotions through words while being diplomatic? As we both agree 'considered' posts can eliminate the true feeling. I do not think only anger can be conveyed. I am not being specific about this very situation. And I agree that being diplomatic can be more effective most times. Edited: To provide contest for question.

> So how do you suggest you convey true emotions through words while being diplomatic?

If your emotions are destructive, wait to until they've changed to speak.

It's not like there's just one feeling that is "true." Furthermore, there's more than just feeling. The original, for example, was probably embellished to be more humorous and to get people's attention. The rant aspect-- that Google doesn't take service APIs seriously enough-- wasn't redacted or re-presented at all. So far, it's just the amazon-bashing, which, true as it may have been, was never intended to be a fair and comprehensive review of his beliefs or feelings; considered or not.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#87

Post by stonemetal »

gaius wrote: post #55
jonah wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good illustration of no matter how brilliant the leader is, a bad team under them and/or poor execution can lead to failure. Even with this infighting and whatnot going on Amazon is still doing amazing things. I'd be interesting to see what it'd look like if they were able to execute everything well. It seems that's also a crucial role of the exec - if they see something that needs to be happening and it's n…

How does a good leader end up with a bad team? That's worth understanding.

There are probably a million different ways for it to go bad.

There is a theory that gets posted here from time to time that As hire As and a few Bs that get through the filter, Bs hire Bs and a few Cs get through the filter, and so on down the line until you have hired people you really shouldn't have.

The other theory is promote until incompetent.

My guess is much more mundane, when you hire middle management they act like middle management. Which works as long as Their sphere of responsibility and control is well defined. When you need to cross cut concerns middle management actively fights against it. All most like using inheritance for code reuse and having deep inheritance hierarchies.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#89

Post by ilamont »

scrame wrote: post #61
ot wrote: post #15

His description of presentations to Bezos reminds the infamous BillG reviews http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

> The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand. Exactly. A few years back, I found myself in a one-on-one saying: "you would think someone taking a job managing a hog farm would at least know what a hog is." Though, that was about web-development. A suitable allegory.

Except it doesn't always apply.

Lou Gerstner and Meg Whitman are two examples from the technology world. Both came into their jobs at IBM and eBay with zero tech experience, but got up to speed very quickly. Of course, had they failed to do so they would have been out within a year or two.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#90

Post by tatsuke95 »

ilamont wrote: post #89
scrame wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand. Exactly. A few years back, I found myself in a one-on-one saying: "you would think someone taking a job managing a hog farm would at least know what a hog is." Though, that was about web-development. A suitable allegory.

Except it doesn't always apply. Lou Gerstner and Meg Whitman are two examples from the technology world. Both came into their jobs at IBM and eBay with zero tech experience, but got up to speed very quickly. Of course, had they failed to do so they would have been out within a year or two.

And this is the real truth of the matter. The above posters are correct, you do need knowledge of something to run it, but understand that business knowledge and experience is ALSO that "something".

Once you obtain certain scale, you can't do everything. It's equally ignorant to think an engineer can run a business top to bottom as it is to think an MBA can fully run an engineering company.

I so often read here MBA used pejoratively, but remember that most small businesses fail because they're run by people who have skills but no idea how to run a business. A major corporation needs both (and more!) skills.

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