#startups

Leonardo da Vinci’s Performance Review:
Choosing the right employee for a job

Sometimes only one employee is qualified for a job. Sometimes speed is more important than expertise. Savvy managers routinely gain enough understanding of new projects to target the work to the workers’ strengths.  Even in creative fields, managers determine which worker is best for a job based on their speed and skill. Take a profession as inherently immeasurable as art. Art benefactors are middle managers who know the go-to person… Read More »Leonardo da Vinci’s Performance Review:
Choosing the right employee for a job

Back to the Office? Hell No, We Won’t Go:
Winners and losers of the no-office future

It’s almost like the workers of the world have unionized. Pre-pandemic, employers could demand physical presence in an office because many other companies made the same demands. It took a global pandemic to change the calculus of in-person work. Now that workers have a taste of freedom, returning to offices is a hard sell, especially since many employees have experienced remote work success. For many smart companies, remote work is… Read More »Back to the Office? Hell No, We Won’t Go:
Winners and losers of the no-office future

The Battle of Grocery Shopping Tech:
Innovations in supermarket smart carts

Never have grocery prices been so high. The sting of inflation makes parting with hard-earned cash even more painful after a sub-standard shopping experience. This article focuses on the high and low points of three in-store technology solutions intended to remove friction from grocery shopping. While these technologies do nothing to curb out-of-control prices, they do minimize or eliminate some of the things shoppers hate most — like waiting in long checkout… Read More »The Battle of Grocery Shopping Tech:
Innovations in supermarket smart carts

Pete Rose and Software Rearchitecture:
Yup, the two are related

Children of the ’70s may remember Pete Rose, aka Charlie Hustle, as a superb, hard-charging Cincinnati Reds baseball player with a Popeye physique. Millennials may remember Rose as the Reds’ manager banned from baseball forever for betting on games. A spectacular, Rudy Giuliani-like fall from grace. What does Pete Rose have to do with software rearchitecture? Plenty. The most fraught words a CEO will hear from a CTO are, “We need… Read More »Pete Rose and Software Rearchitecture:
Yup, the two are related

Ten New Professionally Relevant Nonfiction Books:
Business and life lessons in peculiar places

It delights me when a nonfiction book I read for pleasure and not work unexpectedly provides professional insights. It’s a double whammy. Sure, I can learn the lingua franca of technology management by reading business bestsellers like Good to Great (Hedgehog concept) or The Lean Startup (Build-Measure-Learn-Pivot concept). Often, however, books not classified as “business” yield the sweetest and rarest inspirational nuggets. I chose each nonfiction book on the following… Read More »Ten New Professionally Relevant Nonfiction Books:
Business and life lessons in peculiar places