I started programming with edlin in MS-DOS using batch files. Later on I evolved into doing Turbo Pascal and at some point I went to a school where they thought C++, Power Builder and Java. Luckily at that moment something crazy started happening, this thing called World Wide Web. All of a sudden you could without any expensive tools or servers. All I needed to do was learn Pico and get an account on the College system.

You will see people grow when given an opportunity and an end goal which is somewhat clear. It can of course fail too. But, more often than not giving people an opportunity will get a.positive reaction. This, however, is in stark contrast too strategies where you set goals and demand reporting on this goals or KPI status. Those things undermine the people given a task and a goal. It also relieves them of the task of thinking.

I I’m have interviewed for higher management positions during my career. One question which pops up in all of them is this: “do you have experience in leading through middle managers” A fair question one would think given that as a higher position manager you’ll have some other managers below you. However, there is one thing I’ve seen many places which too many higher level managers miss. That’s the ability to keep in touch with what’s happening on the lowest level.

Many companies spend an awful amount of resources and focus on trying to motivate their employees. This is of course I theory a great thing which should benefit employees. There is however one thing every company should look into before looking at how to motivate: What are we doing which demotivate people? Are there hurdles in our organization which prevents people from doing their job? Is there something we’re doing which drive people nuts?

I remember reading about The Change Function, which was a term I first read in the book with that as the title by Pip Coburn. I was recently reminded about this as there was a discussion at work about how NodeJS was slipping in unnoticed, while things such as Grails or Scala was having a more difficult time. I think that NodeJS is making headway in rapid fashion because it has both the parameters needed for the change function: