You know that random browsing you do at work everyday? I spin it as ‘cool things I read’ and post a blog about it every week. Here is a list of cool things I read this week.
1. A service that drains your competitors daily ad-word budget
2. A look into Comcast’s culture of selling
3. Mysterious fast radio bursts from outer space
4. Martin Fowler on Technical Debt
5. Podcast with CEO of Gravity on why MySpace failed
My notes:
1. A service that drains your competitors daily ad-word budget
Does Dogbert really exist? On a more serious note, I am unable to figure out an ethical way to stop this beyond hoping people are good enough not to sign up for the service. Sigh.
2. A look into Comcast’s culture of selling
D’uh! No surprises that the culture at Comcast is leading to the pretty awful customer service they provide.
3. Mysterious fast radio bursts from outer space
If there are aliens, I hope they play chess.
4. Martin Fowler on Technical Debt
I reread this piece this week. I like working on resource strapped projects where no one can optimize for their own team. Technical debt is a natural by product. The deliberate/inadvertent and reckless/prudent is a good way to frame the invariable compromises that teams need to make.
5. Podcast with CEO of Gravity on why MySpace failed
Juicy part for me was from 14:45 where Amit Kapur talks about balancing short term revenue vs innovation and the culture clash with NewsCorp as the key reasons for MySpace losing. I love collecting examples of good engineering beating dumb metrics. The example of how MySpace decided to eschew Ajax just so their page views count went up is a good addition to my collection.
I want to find out what conditions produce remarkable software. A few years ago, I chose to work as the first professional tester at a startup. I successfully won credibility for testers and established a world-class team. I have lead the testing for early versions of multiple products. Today, I run Qxf2 Services. Qxf2 provides software testing services for startups. If you are interested in what Qxf2 offers or simply want to talk about testing, you can contact me at: [email protected]. I like testing, math, chess and dogs.
