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I see a lot of companies competing for top talent, and thinking about it as the silver bullet for their growth. It is a romantic vision promoted by histories of startup founders. Relying on recruiting top people as a key for the company makes growth unreliable. It is risky long term strategy. Think about McDonald’s or Starbucks. You don’t have a favourite waiter or barista there. You go there because the experience will be nearly the same everywhere you go. This, a great experience every time, should be your goal as a director or manager Outstanding employers will help, but…
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I have a fantastic opportunity to work with San Francisco startup as a lead manager for the whole software development team located in Warsaw, Poland. During the last 17 months. I was able to create a great working (and not only) relationship with my US partners. It didn’t come a natural way, as building trust remotely isn’t anything that you can learn at school. There are my key learnings: Video calls are critical. Thanks to them you put a real face on your Slack or Jira profile. Also, take in mind that you shouldn’t expect an unprepared video call –…
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Technical debt is a popular term in software development. However, after my endeavours with tech startups and software houses, I experienced another set of problems which can hinder organisations, possibly more impactful than technical debt – a lack of proper strategic management and daily short-term trade-offs. Management debt is just as Ben Horowitz puts it: „Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence. Also like technical debt, the trade-off sometimes makes sense, but often does not. More importantly, if you incur the management debt without accounting for it,…
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Blocks, smartwatch that had been on Kickstarter used cold tweets like you can see on adam_blocks, patrickblocks or TonyBlocks to gather $1,613,874, Well played!
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Bariera wejścia/wyjścia z używania produktu softwareowego jest bliska zeru. W kilka kliknięć jestem w stanie założyć a później skasować konto SaaSowej usługi za które płacę kilka tysięcy dolarów. Twórcy skupiają się więc na poprawie doświadczenia użytkownika i jawi się to jako długoterminowo jednyna logiczna strategia rozwoju swojego biznesu. Klienci zyskują. Świat usług jest inny. Jest tu wyraźny koszt (czasowy a czasem i pieniężny) wejścia – negocjacje, spotkania, maile i poprawki umów. Gdy zaś trzeba zrezygnować ze współpracy perspektywa nieprzyjemnych konwersacji jest najmniejszym problemem. Straty, opóźnienia, obrzucanie błotem, porażka projektu a w najgorszych przypadkach dochodzenia swoich racji przed sądem. I w…