EppsNet Archive: Productivity
How to Lose Your Job : A Fictional Memoir (Part I)
Because of the huge productivity differences between good programmers and bad programmers — 10x? 28x? More? — my biggest leverage point as a development manager is my ability to hire people. At my last job, we had an HR Director named Lucy. In every one of our annual Employee Satisfaction Surveys, Lucy’s group had the lowest scores in the entire organization. Nobody liked or respected her. She was, however, close with the CEO, which made that irrelevant. Lucy’s friend Kathy Slauson runs the Slauson and Slauson recruiting agency, so that’s where we got our programming candidates, who were mostly terrible. The Slauson agency doesn’t specialize in IT candidates, although they do have a “technical recruiter,” who unfortunately knows nothing about technology. They don’t bring candidates in for in-person interviews. They take whatever candidates give them in the form of a résumé and they pass the résumés along to clients like… Read more →
You Have to Neglect Things
Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. . . . I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don’t like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There’s no question about this. — Richard Hamming Related Articles Did Mozart Play Kickball (eppsnet.com) 10,000 Hours + Courage == Greatness (podly.tv) Read more →
Twitter: 2010-06-16
RT @penelopetrunk: All productivity books summarized in 11 words: 1 thing at a time. Most important thing 1st. Start now. (via lifehacker) # Read more →
What I Learned From Today’s Webinar on Productivity
If you’re going to talk to people about increasing productivity or efficiency, you have to specify your unit of measure. We may differ regarding your selection, but if you don’t define one at all, your words have no meaning . . . Read more →
Distributing Useless Information
Intranet teams must stop distributing information and start deleting it. The vast majority of intranets would be far more productive and collaborative if they deleted at least 90 percent of the content they currently have. Distributing useless information is how you destroy productivity and collaboration. — Giraffe Forum Read more →