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Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
41–50 of 53 posts
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#42[edit: content removed as the site is back up] HNed, it appears. Google's Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
It's perpetually annoying that people make this an East Coast/West Coast thing (as if "East Coast" can even be generalized about... I'm sure Atlanta has a much in common with NYC as Mountain View has with Eugene). It's very small sample set of people to make any kind of good judgement, and seems to just be catering to stereotypes.
Atlanta is nowhere near the coast.
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#43I realize this is mostly irrelevant, but can anyone confirm/deny the Elfman claim? (It occurs to me that you'd have to be a fantastic whistler to manage some of, say, the spiderman score. Also, I'm pretty sure the guy invents percussion in his basement.)
I recall an interview with him in which he said he sang the theme to the 1989 Batman movie into a tape recorder. The reason was, he thought of it during a commercial airline flight and didn't want to forget it. According to the interview, he went into the restroom and sang it into his tape recorder as loud as possible in order to be heard over the plane noise. That story or one like it is probably where the notion comes from.
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#44I ran into a toxic mentality on the East Coast where there was a class division between "thinkers/leaders" and "doers," and doing automatically placed a person into a lower class. The idea was that execution is for little people and ideas and "leadership" are for big people. I met a bunch of over-stuffed narcissistic and ineffectual big people who could sell like crazy and drum up endless interest by way of their ivy…
I hate that divide also, either you are a manager (the most exalted status being a manager of managers) or you are an "individual contributor" WTF does that mean? Isn't everyone an individual contributor up to and including the president of the US?
Managers make decisions that directly affect multiple people and thus a larger part of a company (the entire company, for a CEO). Like it or not, that means that the value of a manager who makes good decisions is greater than that of an equally skilled person who does good non-managerial work.
Note that this is perfectly compatible with the view of managers as faciliators - if a team of developers can't work effectively because they lack clear requirements or crucial hardware, then the manager who cuts through red tape to get them that hardware and direct access to a customer stakeholder is more valuable to the project than any of the developers.
Of course the crux is that a manager who makes bad decisions is equally more damaging to a company than anyone doing bad non-managerial work, and there is good reason to doubt whether there really is a strong correspondence between the quality of people' decisions and their prospects of becoming (and being promoted as) managers.
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#45I ran into a toxic mentality on the East Coast where there was a class division between "thinkers/leaders" and "doers," and doing automatically placed a person into a lower class. The idea was that execution is for little people and ideas and "leadership" are for big people. I met a bunch of over-stuffed narcissistic and ineffectual big people who could sell like crazy and drum up endless interest by way of their ivy…
Oy perhaps I'm walking into a trap moving to NYC!
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#46"Techné"? Where do people get these? This isn't French, it's "Techne". As in "τέχνη". Or did we start accenting random létters now?
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#47I ran into a toxic mentality on the East Coast where there was a class division between "thinkers/leaders" and "doers," and doing automatically placed a person into a lower class. The idea was that execution is for little people and ideas and "leadership" are for big people. I met a bunch of over-stuffed narcissistic and ineffectual big people who could sell like crazy and drum up endless interest by way of their ivy…
I left a job a few years ago the moment that I realized that the people who were allowed to have ideas and the people who were allowed to implement ideas were always going to be, by deliberate design, different sets of people.
As an aside, that is also why it is dangerous for a company to create an "innovation" or similar department.
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#48[edit: content removed as the site is back up] HNed, it appears. Google's Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
It's perpetually annoying that people make this an East Coast/West Coast thing (as if "East Coast" can even be generalized about... I'm sure Atlanta has a much in common with NYC as Mountain View has with Eugene). It's very small sample set of people to make any kind of good judgement, and seems to just be catering to stereotypes.
I expect it has entered popular culture via rap music, where they make a big deal about East vs West - even within the same city.
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#49"Techné"? Where do people get these? This isn't French, it's "Techne". As in "τέχνη". Or did we start accenting random létters now?
I dunno, it's on Wikipedia:
"Techne, or techné, is a Greek term..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne
Re: Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups
#50"Techné"? Where do people get these? This isn't French, it's "Techne". As in "τέχνη". Or did we start accenting random létters now?
I dunno, it's on Wikipedia: "Techne, or techné, is a Greek term..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne
That's wrong, that accent has no place there. If anything, it would be téchne, because that's where the stress is. Techné just makes no sense. I think I'll change it.