11–20 of 79 posts
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from "Harvey": Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be ... you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0423/ceo-compensation-12-a...
#6 “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll
settle for intense.”
Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers’
reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it “a culture of
metrics.” With dozens of these gladiator-style showdowns under way each week,
there isn’t much time for soothing words or elaborate rituals of social
cohesion.
[...]
Feisty debates over what metrics to watch are Amazon’s way of life. “There’s
an incredible amount of challenging the other person,” says Manfred Bluemel,
a former senior market researcher at Amazon. “You want to have absolute
certainty about what you are saying. If you can stand a barrage of questions,
then you have picked the right metric. But you had better have your stuff
together. The best number wins.”
In some sense you wouldn’t even be human anymore. People like Jeff are better
regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.Bezos' grandmother was dying of smoking cigarettes, and if he managed to push her into quitting it was probably worth being a little mean about it. This is the kind of "deep" sounding quote that's actually not so deep at all. It's obviously good to be kind, and good to be clever, and in fact in order to really be kind one must be at least a little clever. Check the consequences, not the surface appearance, of your ac…
I agree with your conclusion, but I'm not sure it applies here. Being mean is not the same thing as being persuasive, and very often they are at odds. There are usually better ways to get someone to come around to your way of thinking than making them feel bad about themselves. Making someone feel bad can actually decrease your credibility in their eyes, because it makes them want for you to be wrong. Think about gre…
no it's not. it just depends on who you think your audience is. why do people always put their own use case as general rule for everyone? granted, you're talking about making money. otherwise is perfectly fine being a complete douchebag and everyone still using and loving what you build, invent, research.
And how's that working out?
Another case of "do as I say, not as I do" ?
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." — Brian Kernighan
Think about kindness in your code.
Using Bezos as an example of "kind over clever" is a mistake. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0423/ceo-compensation-12-a... #6 “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.” Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers’ reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it “a culture of metrics.” With dozens of these gladiator-sty…
Using Bezos as an example of "kind over clever" is a mistake. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0423/ceo-compensation-12-a... #6 “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.” Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers’ reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it “a culture of metrics.” With dozens of these gladiator-sty…
Bezos' grandmother was dying of smoking cigarettes, and if he managed to push her into quitting it was probably worth being a little mean about it. This is the kind of "deep" sounding quote that's actually not so deep at all. It's obviously good to be kind, and good to be clever, and in fact in order to really be kind one must be at least a little clever. Check the consequences, not the surface appearance, of your ac…