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The Muppets rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody now has over 10 million views (that's near half the population of Australia). Well, Ringing the Bells, prominently featuring the Swedish Chef, hasn't hit a million views yet, so I'm slightly ahead of the curve on this one.
Enjoy!
I recently had to give a presentation on the Google Inc case in my business strategy class at Melbourne Business School. Actually, this was a syndicate (read: group) assignment. Another assignment was to write a paper analysing the business strategy of a company (we chose Yahoo!).
I decided that in order to get feedback, I would record myself giving the presentation and then post the video online for my syndicate members to comment. After all, they had as much at stake in the presentation as me.
I think the live presentation went better than the recorded one. That's mainly because I had lots of practice with my delivery and had some helpful feedback. I'm also more extemporaneous during the actual delivery; this makes my syndicate nervous, but works well for me. It's easier to incorporate humour when it isn't scripted.
Anyways, here's the video of my presentation run-through that I recorded. In the end, I modified some of the slides and added a couple more. I also went faster, so I was able to show both videos.
Business Strategy Presentation on Google Case from Scott Arbeitman on Vimeo.
Like most twenty-somethings, I've been through several jobs. They've all lasted less than two years and they varied considerably from one to another.
The first one didn't pay much and didn't expect much. I used that opportunity to learn how do lots of practical IT things, things they just don't teach you in university. They ultimately didn't need me, my contract expired, and I moved on.
The second one was consulting. I was drop in the deep end, expected to deliver something of great value to a well-established, prestigious organisation. Management was distant, personal development was shunted in favour of billable hours. Those who were in the deep end with you became your confidants. I liked that the most. That, and when I'm feeling insecure, I can name drop the company I used to work for. But I won't.
The third one offered the best management. Having previously felt quite distant from management, a manager who was readily accessible, reasonable and a great listener made a huge difference. When work was dull or I didn't feel I was realising my potential, we worked together to make changes. It was mutually beneficial. Larger organisational factors (an impending merger) made me look elsewhere. It was a shame.
The last one offered a mix of very intelligent people and a hyper-ethical manager. A bit of cultural differences (the programmers there were simply too opinionated to get work done) and the stress of studying part time led to a decision not to extend my three month contact and study full time.
Study has its pros and cons too. In particular, the time slots devoted to schoolwork are highly varied. For six weeks, I was quite bored and considered work part-time. During the next six weeks, I worked harder than I would at a full time job. I like learning new things and I like my fellow students. Knock on wood, I still haven't had a dysfunctional syndicate at MBS while I had plenty at both Melbourne Uni and McGill.
The question for me is what to do next? I want to work in a company that is big enough for advancement and with the scale to attract both intelligent workers and interesting work. But without some of the more limiting corporate systems. I remember the first time I heard of managers spending their money at the end of a financial year so they wouldn't lose out money the following year. I was horrified at such inefficiency. Now, it's so commonplace, I don't blink. It's disturbing.
It is almost time to find that next job. I want this next one to last longer than 2 years. Longer than 10 would be better. It won't be easy. I need to avoid companies with all of the good from previous jobs (smart people, good management) and none of the bad (no commitment to staff, distant management, and so on). It won't be easy, but I've started the journey.
In my Business Strategy class on Saturday morning (!), I asked a seemingly harmless question about why economies of scale did not apply to the now defunct MBS-Melbourne Uni merger. The question apparently struck a nerve with both the lecturer and some of the students. One of the students expressed something I have long felt, not just about the merger, but during my time working at the business school.
We have great faculty in the leading edge of their field. Often, they are engaged in helping real organisations improve their business during the day while lecturing at night and somehow managing to publish their research. Why, then, did the merger fiasco play out the way it did given the business expertise within the school? Why weren't leasons from the Business Strategy subject, for example, applied?
This was the most frustrating thing about working at MBS in general. There was consistent pattern: what I had learned in class was not being applied in the business of the business school. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the school made very little attempt to integrate the knowledge of the faculty with anything practical.
The lecturer in my class described the general phenomenon whereby those who are best equipped to fix a problem neglect their own problems to focus on those of others This is know as the problem of the problem of the cobbler's children.
This is, of course, no excuse. It's not an explanation. And it isn't generalizable.
Let us consider a counter-example very near to me. Those who work in the IT industry as technologists (as distinct from those in other functions such as project managers) almost always reserve the very best hardware and software for themselves.
Think about it. At a technical conference (say Java), a majority of participants are using Macs (widely considered to be the superior platform). Developers are usually early adopters of the latest and greatest. My peers were the first to use GMail and, more recently, Google Wave. We were the first to set up wireless networks at home. We do things with our laptops that are difficult and complicated, but that help enrich out lives through technology. We have bigger monitors.
Do you really think Sergey Brin, founder of Google, is really using Windows XP? Do you think Joel Spolsky is using Outlook? I don't.
Unfortunately, as I previously wrote, organisations are less likely to adopt the IT practices of their staff, much to their detriment. They are missing the opportunity to make themselves as productive as their most productive employees.
So what separates technology workers from some of the other professions? I'm not sure.
First, my underlying premise may be false. Are IT workers really different from those in other professions? Certainly my perception is that they are but I don't have the research to back this up.
Part of it may be that IT workers genuinely enjoy their field more than others. It is certainly not uncommon to use my leisure time learning new technologies and new ways of doing things; much more so than other professions who might attend a conference or two, and only when paid for by their employer.
Another explanation could be pragmatism. Is a psychologist really going to give himself therapy? Is a doctor really more inclined to diet and exercise? Installing a new Twitter client or learning a new programming language certainly seem much more attainable goals, and the costs are generally small.
The main thing I can conclude is that if you are in a profession or work for a company that doesn't implement the skills you market, your outcome is probably not going to be as successful as you want. That, and technologists probably enjoy their field, on average, more than others. Join us!
The Signals vs Noise blog recently cited [via Carly Bishop Cheney] — aside: Carly's home page is dozens of megabytes so you might want to skip the link on your iPhone — the following tweet:
If I get one more inquiry from someone having a huge wedding at an expensive venue asking for ‘recession pricing’ I am going to explode!
Many comments support the logic that because the expenses haven't changed, there is no reason to consider changing the prices. This is, of course, missing half of the equation. A market has a supply curve (this is your expenses) and a demand curve. You are pricing at a markup over your cost, so, indeed, you do have some room to readjust prices.
Certainly, recessions can change the demand curve so it is worth considering whether this has any effect on the elasticity of demand at your current price. If you can increase your profit by lowering prices (thus selling more of your goods or services), you should certainly consider it, but, of course, one must consider the longer terms effects of this strategy. On the other hand, you might also consider raising your prices and selling less, but at a higher price. Elasticity will determine which strategy maximises profit.
I'm surprised that there are so many comments by those who things lowering their price during a recession is such a ridiculous proposition, mainly on the basis that their expenses haven't changed.
My friend, former coworkers and MBS alum has a thoughtful post following on some of the themes from a previous post. In it, he sites a great Slate article which argues for a loosening of IT restrictions:
…The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies’ success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity—they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.
Ameel thoughtfully concludes that IT departments would be wise to add their own in-house analysts to match IT tools available to those in the company who might need to use them, lest services be blocked somewhat arbitrarily.
What is often missing is…:
Without that fourth part, IT departments have a hard time keeping up with what people in the organization believe are the most effective and efficient ways of doing their work. They also don’t keep up with the latest technological solutions for various business problems.
- In-house IT Consulting: the people who liaise directly with different parts of the business and use the latest technologies to improve the way those people work
I couldn't agree more. I'd like to think that my former team in Melbourne Business School performed that function admirably. Often, we would just connect business users with simple off-the-shelf services that would dramatically effect productivity. Three examples would be Confluence, Google Groups, and Google Desktop, but there are many more.
If you're not from the Computer Science discipline, you can safely skip this post.
After doing some hard drive spring-cleaning, I came across the Latex files relating to my master's thesis at the University of Melbourne. Although I undertook a Masters of Software Systems Engineering by coursework, I was able to write a minor thesis in lieu of 2 subjects.
At the time, compilers and type analysis were of particular interest to me, having thoroughly enjoyed the Compiler Design class at McGill several months earlier. In that class, we wrote a compiler for a toy language called WIG and added features to an existing compiler for the JOOS language, a subset of Java. We used the SableCC lexer/parser, an open source compiler compiler written by another McGill student. I remember staying up several late nights before the project was due. It was great fun.
The forthcoming language enhancements in Java 5 provided a good platform for static code analysis and enhancement; a similar paper inferred generic types, for example. I had also competed a survey of programming languages class which compared functional, logic and imperative language (Haskell, Prolog and Java respectively) taught by Peter Schachte. Peter was kind enough to supervise.
With that background, I thought I would post the PDF of the paper I wrote. I'm not sure if this is the exact paper I submitted, and it certainly includes some typos and, having reread it recently, I can see that my writing needed a bit of work. It is very difficult to decipher some of the content. I suspect I used the most complex symbols and wording possible, but I had slaved through reading similar papers during my research so I must of thought that was the best way to do things.
Without any further ado, please find my paper, Inference of Enumerated Types In Java in PDF format. Note that this paper has not been published in any journal, and has had minimal peer review. It is presented for educational purposes only. However, if you'd like to chat about it, do get in touch.