eengstrom

Back in February I met with the Dean of CECS and Chair Harris of the CS department. One "good" problem for them is that nearly all (but few exceptions) are hired after graduation by the existing large businesses in Portland.

I don't hire strictly based on paper and education (being a high-school dropout type) but for many bright people, that is their best entry into CS and engineering. We'll have to work with PSU to increase the breadth and depth of their students - the really good news, no disagreement from them!

I'm moving my family and business to Portland, OR in order to grow. 4 days in Portland and I was able to meet with a couple of dozen people. I haven't seen a better city in this country ready to grow, try new things and be willing to support themselves and others become successful.

Portland Seed Fund is another win for everyone in Portland and Oregon.

No early manager's education is complete in my opinion without reading Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman's "First Break All The Rules".

Do yourself a favor, order a bunch of used copies for your staff to read. I've probably bought 200 or more copies of this book new and used and no other single book published in the micro-computing era has shaped my thinking more about running an organization.

I will add that starting from a good base of effective working culture, then working on culture as a theme will yield significant benefit.

I think the answer isn't just the employment and supporting of people already excelling in the system, it is in changing the distribution of opportunity prior to formal education.

We intend to do this by operating a program within our company, starting with community computer and science lab, promoting to a group work day with interactive collaboration, then eventually fitting a child's interest in a role with a second-seat internship at each employee's desk.

This is all early stage of process, but 20 years of thinking and experimentation. If I'm able to build my current venture out, my next will be promoting these early programs to help expand young people's thinking (and hopefully help them make themselves their own role model) about science and technology.

I would like to speak with you. ^ is something we can solve together.

I am almost 40. I have been in the IT world actively since 1984 here in Berkeley/San Francisco/Silicon Valley. I have worked in big corporate, nationally and internationally.

I have worked with fewer than 10 black men and women in a technical role in my entire career; spanning hundreds of teams and nearly a hundred customers and employers.

It matters because opportunity and outcomes aren't equal. The problem isn't purely the IT scene, but one of the greatest challenges the United States faces.

Awesome point, Bundini. Not all entrepreneurs need to be leaders, but "The One" in every venture needs to be able to influence others to believe. Cultivating people skills, understanding basics of business communication that Dale Carnegie published nearly 80 years ago.

Charisma, people skills, energy, good-vibe - call it what you will, but if you can engage people in a trusting and real dialog they WILL believe in you and follow you into fire.

Obviously my comment was misunderstood. Given everything the author of the post wrote about, "No" should be his "Yes". "No" is something you'll hear in life many, many times and it doesn't even phase people who are truly motivated.

So "No" in this case is brief language for meaning; "Go build a great product, kick the teeth out of the competition/market and don't fall into a rut."

'who's probably' isn't a very strong statement of enthusiasm.

Your best bet is for one of you to travel to the other and hack for a few weeks and sleep on the couch or floor if necessary.

You need to synchronize your operations and shake out the trust issue.

Set up a mandatory morning and afternoon call at the same time every day. 15 minutes.

Spend the first two minutes of each call recapping your current milestones. If it takes more than 2 minutes you're talking about the wrong stuff. See below.

"Yesterday we expected to get to X." Then reiterate what the team members told you in the last meeting.

Person 1: What are you working on? Need anything? Next step? Person 2: What are you working on? Need anything? Next step? Person 3: What are you working on? Need anything? Next step?

Anything taking more than 2 minutes take offline, or stay on the bridge line after the others are gone. If you do this for a few weeks you'll quickly spot who is flaking, working for another company or project on the side, or who really just needed more direction from you.

When people experience trust issues, there's a good reason: either they are insecure, or someone is untrustworthy. I've managed large corporate customers remotely for years, performed complex projects remote. Once you get the process under way you can move to a single morning call.

Do not skip it. Do not reschedule it. Do not miss it. Get in the habit and your team will fall in line. The rest of the issues will sort themselves out.

I only have one comment to offer: No.

Frankly? I had to get a new job.

What did I learn from the decision and actions that led to me being fired?

Weigh your politics and actions very carefully in the work place, especially when climbing management. Just because you are absolutely, factually, empirically correct, won't mean you'll win a struggle or a single person will even support you.

Because in reality it is only a three...

Sorry for my slow response; how does the process handle scaling above 1kb? Traditionally there's a predictable curve of expected performance as the scale of request size increases.

Happy to take this conversation private; spent the last 10 years in performance and scalability as a indie consultant for Fortune companies. I know a lot of people looking for replacement mechanisms for high volume, variable sized transaction enterprise buses.

Also interested to understand the data access methods you've tested and what works best with your code. eengstrom >at< gmail.

It may be archaic, but I'm in the same boat with you. If China lined the great wall with dry-erase, provided coffee and a few director chairs, I'd relocate and use the entire space - and a lot of markers... Online I use scriblink.com.

One piece of advice: talk to a licensed professional therapist or some other trusted and professional source of counseling.

My original idea for this venture started over a dinner. My mind had been churning on related business challenges for a couple of years. I was not only focused on highly visible opportunities, I was looking for the right time and right problem to solve. For me, this meant, how can I help my customers make a great deal more money?

I pulled a sheet of paper out of the printer, scribbled down 12-13 ideas, drew some logical relationships, circled groups, labeled the ideas and then spent about 2 months refining and testing the ideas through discussion and research.

At this point we're narrowed down to about 8% of the scope of the original concept, but that 8% is viable, has customer traction (already) and looks likely to earn 1.5-2mm per customer per year.

We expect to spend another week on the pitching to initial customers and try and get closure with our first enterprise customer in the next two weeks. How long it will take to reach the right funding, we don't know. It's enterprise software and we want to grow.

What's different here is that we haven't coded anything. We won't until we have directed feedback from our pilot customers. Oh yeah, and funding. :)

From my first sentence: serious mistake with a ceramic high-output cook top

We did not go with the induction, I should have run gas. I did, however, test pretty extensively with induction. Even in the $6,000 range I wasn't pleased with the results in testing.

Have you had a chance to measure operational throughput vs hardware utilization yet? I'd be very interested in loose metrics and stats instead of a general "faster than" statement.

+1 for Jmeter

I've been focusing specifically in performance and scalability for the last decade. The vast majority of problems that expose themselves under load or many-request scenarios are blatantly obvious in a profiler or tracing data access patterns. I recommend you start there, better use of time.

Is this technology being used anywhere commercially or with intent for commercial use? Can you also quantify how long/roughly how many thousands of hours of effort this has been in development?

Goal setting and achieving requires one of two things in my mind; internal driving forces or external driving forces.

A long time ago I was both hired and fired by a pair of brilliant Hollywood producers. The mid-sized video game company I worked for had just been acquired by a major player; we killed ourselves for a year on a totally mind-blowing franchise game, yet the title was sh*tcanned near release (Oh, 3DO) and then they dumped the entire team off a ledge, myself included.

In the hiring interview the producer asked me "What is your six month goal, year, three and five year plans?" Oddly the hiring meeting helped me prepare for the layoff meeting and the next 18 years in my career. She referred to my near-term goals, which had changed, obviously but I was able to take the firing calmly because I saw it was a twist and event in part of a broader, longer-term plan.

The vast majority of people I know are nearly headless when it comes to goals. You don't have to define a 3,000 point plan, but if you can learn to set a horizon and a few steps towards the point you want to reach, you can in turn focus on the immediate and near-term and actually become much more flexible in your approach to the outcome. You learn from practice whether something takes you closer or further away from that 1, 3, or 5 year plan and make better personal decisions.

If you simply can't seem to meet any goals, there are tons of books and audio sources for basic goal and discipline building. Your goals may be unreasonable or you may lack the underlying strong habits to push for a better outcome.

I would suspect that you are lacking discipline. If you're undisciplined you may need to find other sources of drive to meet your goals. If you're an entrepreneur, you need to get some mentoring and find someone willing to help keep you focused and on track.

Serious cook, serious equipment, serious mistake with a ceramic high-output cook top. We did it for the simple reason that my spouse is tired of cleaning up the disaster of a stove after cooking for 12. We considered induction for the home with some of our pets being underfoot/on counters while cooking.

Our expensive cook top was tested and branded as copper safe. It is, until water gets between the cook top and the copper pan. Also found that the rapid heat generated by an utterly imprecise dial control system could damage cookware, so I now tend to bring them to temp in two stages.

I would definitely go with gas if the line is already brought into the kitchen and available.

You can obtain Fogor induction cook tops and try them out and take them back if they don't work. Same mechanic as a full scale range. Make sure you do a double oven and if you can afford it, install a micro hood with a real vent outside the house - or your attic goods will smell like bacon in perpetuity.

I think the general consensus is that getting significant funding requires a broader team. You have an advantage in that you're fairly far along on the development aspects. You have plenty of equity valued at whatever amount it is. Depending on your project and your terms, you really should consider having a co-founder or even two with supportive skill sets and backgrounds, good networks and contacts.

This will greatly increase your survivability in the near and long term. Unless you're a purely technical "develop and release then 'look ma' no hands'" product.

Your question is too vague and not really answerable with brevity. So I'll give you a piece of general survival advice that worked for me.

Reiterate constantly that the other party is doing good work, you respect them, trust them and everything you indicated above. Also be equally clear in what you need from them to do to avoid making you get crazy. Portray the issues you have with them as issues that are your own; "you know I lose attention span if I don't say something every 2 minutes in a meeting." in lieu of "you talk too much and I can't get a word in edgewise".

If they make you crazy by being flaky, ask them to try and meet basic needs such as contact with you and alternate deadlines. "When do you think it will be ready, best case? Worst?" Most people who are flaky will come in around worst case, because they procrastinate. Just an example.

You're in a high pressure relationship that will undergo an accelerated and constantly changing rate of romance, passion, honeymoon, frustration, fear and mistrust. This is normal; just keep focused on your trust and empathy for your co-founder and be clear on what you need from them.

"I really appreciate your enthusiasm when speaking to investors, and I would like to have a few more opportunities to contribute to a point. Could you please try passing part of the answer off to me in pitching or discussion?" - Whatever it takes.

Manage your co-founder, document your requirements and more than anything, don't stay angry or let an issue lie for more than 15 minutes to cool down.

SingAlong,

I have been working with remote workers from India for 20 years. I have not had a single experience compelling me to do so again, since 2000. The choice over the last decade hasn't been mine, but often the result of having to help US corporations solve performance and scalability issues, in conjunction with their on/off shore partners.

I could complain about how various companies from India and how US companies utilizing them have caused terrible harm (both to me and others directly) by a mix of negligent and non-professional behavior, but it has happened to a degree where the feelings have become generalized and deeply and sometimes even actively belligerent towards individuals.

You've received some excellent advice from bjonathan, but I'd also like to encourage you to provide a personalized blog. Include pictures or video about yourself.

Assume that half the resistance to working with you is going to be the dreaded "language barrier". If you can't provide directly transparent and creditable links to your work and references on LinkedIn, I suspect you'll have a very hard time obtaining meaningful work as an individual.

Keep in mind, however, that you're just out of school. You're going to need to do the same thing any other engineer will anywhere else in the world. Mature, gain work experience, demonstrate value, etc.

Warning: I can write about cooking all day long. I can cook for ever longer.

Cooking is my form of artistic expression and a perfect outlet for nearly every aspect of my personality and work experience combined.

I've been cooking seriously for years, even going so far as to have trained formally in commercial kitchens from commis to chef as a form of vacations from the IT world. Adding to that over 15 years of constant travel; I've eaten just about everything and everywhere in thousands of restaurants and food stalls. I have incredibly high standards and test myself against them constantly.

It keeps me grounded in all things I do and gives me a way to directly please others and gratify my own need to test for success or failure. (Try cooking for a nationally renown chef and his girlfriend in your home several times. No excuses and the pressure is intense, no matter how gracious the guest.)

Order, discipline, attention and eye for detail, intuition, physical sciences and chemistry, good taste, a rock solid internal clock and ability to spin dozens of plates with one hand - all of these skills help in many ways outside the kitchen.

My favorites foods are too many to list, but I'm a big fan of making house pate and terrine. Duck and rabbit rillettes. You work with me, you'll need to watch your waist line. I'm hoping to have a full-scale commercial kitchen in our next office location and I intend to use it daily.

How many bosses do you know want to run their own brasserie style cafeteria? I may be totally nuts, but I have confidence I can get the job done in the kitchen.

As a senior manager type, I hire people for Human Resources to prevent disgruntled employees and intentionally bad outcomes to my decisions with people and local governments from taking everything we've built in some over inflated complaint or class action. You'll see how easy it can happen after a few mistakes are made.

Lawyers and HR aren't required to be nice, just act nice. Finding a creative and caring HR professionals that can help your organization grow in a positive way, in full compliance with thousands of little things (and with as few impacts to the employee, manager and investors lives) is actually a great investment for any company, especially one growing up with a strong financial reality.

On hiring: I haven't used an HR department to hire since 1995. I've typically worked with outside parties to gather pools of resources and my best method of hiring has been through self-directed job advertisements that I handled from first to last contact. When I can't handle it, or I don't have really the right skill set to evaluate deeper understanding in the candidate, I delegate the hiring decision and help the hiring employee complete the process properly.

Communication Skills should be evaluated as a part the total sum evaluation. When going through a stack of resumes, I look for clarity, not grammar, and if I can spot your spelling mistakes, you're in trouble. :)

Communication gaps are like any other quality/time/scope/cost factor when managing people. If the lack of language skills aren't counterbalanced by brilliance in other areas, you'll end up with a net loss in investing in the employee.

Evaluating whether the poor language skills is a sign of being lazy, hasty, arrogant or simply from another native language group, you could miss a good deal of other high-value talents.

I've worked on an awful lot of teams and projects over the years. This discussion and the avoidance or embracing of the process flavor of the month, is not new. Agile has been around since people stopped drinking the RUP cool aid and came up with XP (a process that keeps meetings short by standing on your feet!). RUP lost its own gravity when Rational then IBM acquired the IP and turned it into another legendary white whale, from the origins of humble Objectory.

The one great thing I learned from RUP, a cocktail napkin makes a great realization document. Especially when originally served under a cool drink.

Communication and being clear on what the tree-swing looks like and needs to do is all that matters. Your companies will develop culture as they grow based on their pain points and their experiences.

I take the approach of "automate, automate, automate". I also enforce regular activities in intervals of by day of the week. I insist on profiling. I insist on peer code review; which can be done in the IDE or with a cocktail napkin, but I like my developers to be able to communicate what they've just written in case they get hit by a bus.

As a leader, not just the coder, you DO have to be concerned that you're writing something that can hold a the weight of a business on top of it. Would I worry about TDD or BDD before my Series A? No. But I would go back and reiterate and reinforce everything written prior, shortly after.