The Mindset

One of the things I hated as a teenager was being told I should grow up already. Whenever I was told that, my immediate reaction was “You don’t understand anything. YOU grow up!”. Undoubtedly a typical reaction for a teenager. Not to say an immature reaction, which is what got me that far in the […]

Stop whatever it is you’re doing. There’s a new buzz in town.
In our ultra-dynamic industry, yesterday’s Holy Grail is today’s old news. A couple of days ago I wrote about Googlism as the new emerging religion, and what do you know, I’ve just discovered the signs of a new one, already creeping into blogs, articles, […]

A couple of weeks ago I heard a developmental psychologist say that children learn by emotional experience. When you’re trying to explain to a child that something is forbidden, for example, he may understand your words, but unless you can somehow reach him at an emotional level, chances are he will repeat the same behavior […]

We are always in a hurry! That’s what modern life is all about. Always trying to move faster, to make it first, or better still to make it now.
Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that life (and business) shouldn’t be a race. It should be a journey. And like any other journey, we […]

There’s a huge gap between how software development is discussed in books, articles, blogs, and forums, and the way software companies actually run their R&D operations. It’s as if we live in two parallel universes. In one universe most of us know exactly what we should do to develop better software – software that has […]

Being on vacation for the past couple of week got me thinking. Well, frankly, it was that and a bunch of other things. Anyway, when I’m thinking… I’m writing. The result is a new blog called Decaf.
What is it about? Well, I’m not sure yet, but generally it is about our life and how […]

A couple of weeks ago, during a casual conversation, a colleague of mine said how much he hates the overuse of the word “Challenging”. He claimed that whenever there’s an unrealistic goal or settings (like an unrealistic deadline, too few resources, etc.) managers use the word “challenging” to describe the task. Doing a two-month task […]

Many companies face a motivation problem. Some of them are aware of the problem, which is, of course, a good start. But even these companies often tend to sweep the problem under the carpet. They don’t really ignore the problem. They just try to solve it using the easiest possible solution — a solution that never works. […]

Whenever I talk with managers about office politics I get this apologizing, yet sometimes accusing, look saying: “What can we do? If you’re not a politician around here you do not exist”. And this is probably the case. Managers have to be politicians to do their job well. Is that bad?
Politicians are generally not highly […]

It’s not my habit to regularly quote other authors just for the sake of quoting, but this is not the first time I’m quoting J. Timothy King (and probably not the last).
This great text is from his article Moving Chairs and Why It’s Cool. I found it to be so accurate, thought-provoking and well-written, […]