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The Bozo Event Horizon

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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61–70 of 106 posts

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#61

Post by squonk »

It's really about management. Companies evolve as they grow and the magic sauce that took them from Start up to Successful is not the same sauce that takes them from $1 Billion to $10 Billion and then $10 Billion to $100 Billion.

Moreover, the techno-guild at Exxon is going to have a different mandate than Cisco's or Disney's.

Managing growth, competition and markets is the job of management (CEO) and understanding the role that technology plays in their business, and then ensuring that foresight is available (CTO) to them to act on, is what they get paid for.

A Bozo at Amazon might be a god at Delta Airlines.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#62

Post by WildUtah »

Irony: complaining about bozos and then writing this sentence:

"Others, like James Gosling, quietly change the world by building something (the core Java language and libraries) that make so much sense and are so elegant that you just smile when you use them."

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#63

Post by Retric »

aik wrote: post #59
EvanMiller wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An event horizon means there is no going back, not that you are actually in the black hole. Although Microsoft may have continued to put out innovative products and create shareholder value after 1992, the company is now run by a textbook bozo. It must be depressing for people who actually know a thing or two about computer science.

Maybe Microsoft discovered a process of getting out of an event horizon. The work they're doing right now is very interesting.

They bought Kinect, other than that I can't see any real innovation in the last 5 years. Consider there is plenty of talk about surface, but they where talking about it before the iPad came out and it's still little more than a tech demo. Bing is not bad, but it's interface is on par with Duck Duck Go and hardly the 'revolution' in search they were hoping for.

That said, they do seem to keep refining things and that's a path to great products. But, innovation is more than just doing a mash-up that meets everyone's expectations without any 'wow' factor.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#64

Post by bonobo »

SCdF wrote: post #45

Am I the only person who feels woefully inadequate whenever I read articles where phrases like "10 or 100 times as productive as the average engineer". Sorry guys, I'm trying my best! :-(

Does it help to know that you're not alone? I often hear that good programmers can be an order of magnitude more productive than the Average Joe, and I wonder if talent is required (as in 'it MUST be present') to reach this level or if I can make it with hard work alone. I think it's like being born rich or born poor. Success is based on talent, opportunity and hard work. Some people have got all of them in abundance, some people have got some, and some people lack all of them. The most successful ones are under the spotlight, and our perception of talent ends biased.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#68

Post by ekianjo »

I have been in organizations where there are two ladders (in a very large company). One for technical people and one for management. Needless to say, all the bozos clearly went to the Management ladder, while the technical ladder kept the people with more depth in their field, the ones who actually made stuff in the first place. However, I felt that the technical ladder had flaws as well. The higher titles (principle scientist, research fellow, etc...) were simply provided based on these people's past achievements. Once you are such levels there is very little incentive to work hard to go to a higher level, and there is virtually no risk of being fired either. So, you end up with relatively senior people who reapply what worked for them instead of trying new things and pushing new technologies or new ways of doing things. And many times when I was in touch with these people in the higher technical ladder, making presentations and all, I did not find much of what they were talking about to be very impressive or innovative either.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#69

Post by recoiledsnake »

Retric wrote: post #63
aik wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Microsoft discovered a process of getting out of an event horizon. The work they're doing right now is very interesting.

They bought Kinect, other than that I can't see any real innovation in the last 5 years. Consider there is plenty of talk about surface, but they where talking about it before the iPad came out and it's still little more than a tech demo. Bing is not bad, but it's interface is on par with Duck Duck Go and hardly the 'revolution' in search they were hoping for. That said, they do seem to keep refining things and that'…

>They bought Kinect

And Apple bought FingerWorks, which means there was no real innovation from Apple in iPhone multitouch technology, same with Siri. Or does it?

There is a lot to getting research technology into a usable, affordable and marketable form than just buying it and copy pasting the code.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#70

Post by groby_b »

felipemnoa wrote: post #48
SCdF wrote: post #45

Am I the only person who feels woefully inadequate whenever I read articles where phrases like "10 or 100 times as productive as the average engineer". Sorry guys, I'm trying my best! :-(

Such people do exist. Notch, creator of Minecraft, is a good example. The guy virtually developed it himself. I'm currently developing a game myself and I can tell you, it is a lot of work. At minimum I would say the guy is at least 10 times more productive than the average developer/engineer.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of Notch's productivity is based on things he learned in previous projects. According to Wikipedia, he's been programming video games since 86. That's 26 years of experience.

If you use those 26 years wisely, you'll learn a lot of different things - and more importantly, you can draw on 26 years of mistakes that you now know to avoid.

I'm not saying he's not also a talented programmer - but all "superstars" I know are as good as they are because they have worked hard for a long time, and they keep working hard.

(She says while posting on HN... I probably should head back over to my code ;)

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