T M T » Management

Vacation Day

Xuhui — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:00:55 +0000

If you want to just take one day off, what’s the best day to be off?

I think Monday is the best day to be off. That way, you create a 3-day long weekend. Then, you also have left a short week (4-day work week) to look forward to. Furthermore, Friday is usually the slow day when people are winding down for the weekend. If you want to get something done by yourself, Friday is usually relatively quiet. Monday on the other hand is usually very chaotic since problems tend to be accumulated over the weekend or become past-due. It is a good day to be away and then come back on Tuesday to get a quick “download” and start to be the “Mr. Fix-it”.

Why Scientists Like Hard Problems

Xuhui — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 04:55:10 +0000

I’ve worked with many scientists. Almost everyone have said that the most important thing that keeps them going are the technical challenges – the harder the better. And I’m one of them.

I had always been attributing this to the sense of accomplishment scientists are craving for. However, in the real world, most people usually are not knowledgeable at all how easy or difficult those scientific tasks are. Furthermore, when it is done the scientists usually don’t even bother to tell people how hard it is. They usually are more than satisfied by stating very dryly “here is what we wanted…, and here is how I did it. Thank you very much.”

So why would they still fight for the most difficult tasks and shun away from the routine and easy ones, even though people could give them equal if not more accolade for accomplishing more of the easy tasks? Here is my “new theory” – based on an interesting psychological phenomenon.

A psychologist researcher friend once told me that misery is the mother of happiness. Because euphoria is rare and unsustainable, people often experience it very briefly when long-lasting suffering suddenly stops. In other words, for a scientist that euphoria comes when the days, weeks or months of hard labor and utter frustration suddenly produces a beautiful scientific solution. Because that moment is such a high, and we’ve all been there before, the everyday hard work on a hard problem suddenly takes on a play quality.

Well, maybe next week I’ll explain why golf is so addictive using the same theory.

Play the hand you’re dealt

Xuhui — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:48:24 +0000

In the corporate world, we all have heard way too many times how someone complains about how difficult his/her work situation has been – difficult project, bad boss, or poor engineering culture, etc. Some people spend most of their day being depressed and act depressed. This, not only affect you and your coworker’s mood, but also actually would create an under-achiever out of you.

When I was a teenager I would play bridge for hours with my friends. I like one aspect of bridge very much in that you have to play every hand you’re dealt with with equal amount of enthuse no matter how good or poor a hand you’ve got. Unlike in poker you can always fold a poor hand, you have to play every hand. And if you outplay a poor hand you may end up gaining more points than a good hand in bridge.

It is the same thing in life. You’ve got to do the best you can with the hand you’re dealt with. Instead of complaining, try to figure out what you can do about the situation you’re in. If you’re in a awkward situation, maybe you can turn it around and make a few friends in the process. If you have a difficult boss, try to influence him/her a little at a time and manage your boss better.

If you do that every day, not only you will not waste day after day sitting there sour-graped, but I guarantee you that you will actually achieve great results. And people around you (including your boss) will soon notice your great attitute and be happily surprised.

From technologists to executives

Xuhui — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 23:53:01 +0000

Today I attended the EdgeTrend event where we have a panel of 5 people who are senior executives in local companies:

Tom Kenny, President, NetBurner
Jim Wilson, CTO, Tarari
Geoff Siegel, VP Alaris Products, Cardinal Health
Diana Stewart-Sanderbeck, Nokia
Timothy Scott, President, Pharmatek Laboratories

Most of them were strong technologists before they crossed over to management. Two of them are graduates of LAMP and EPSE program here in UCSD. One of them (Diana) even though is not a technologist but have great insight since her job is to work with those type of technologists turned senior managers in her company.

It is an interesting seminar, certainly very pertinent to the audience of people in technology management. Some of the salient points:

Advantages of technical background in the senior suite: analytical thinking in business issues; Understanding of company’s core technical differenciations; technical know-how comes handy when starting your own business (two of the panelists are serial entrepreneurs); Instant respect from technical staff; Not easily to be snowed by employees, vendors or clients on technical issues.
Potential disadvantages: Larger ego; Pay less attention to the people side (touchy feely issues); Tend to think you are still a top technologist and still try to give solutions instead of asking questions.
Advices: Spend more time on accounting and financing (and they are not the same), more time on marketing and sales (and they are not the same either); Work on the feedbacks on the job; When learning from leaders in the past, learn from their mistakes, not successes. Find the science in nonscience issues.

Google front page

Xuhui — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:09:41 +0000

Recent issue of Fast Company has an article (“Google’s secret weapon”) about the product management of the google.com front page. Some take-aways:

Managing a simple front page is not easy – especially when it is Google. Every biz unit or new project wants to get on the front page, it takes great decipline and solid metrics to maintain a simple and effective one.
Once the page becomes cluttered (think MSN or Yahoo!), there’s no turning back. However, Yahoo! is “loosing” some weight recently by my observation.
Less is not more, but enough is more.

As for web portal, maybe every website should support some level of syndication. Then in the next version of Firefox, people can assemble their own web portal – for example, mail from Yahoo, search from Google, news from MSN, etc in one page. This is different from the web-widget idea since no s/w programming is required.

Trust

Xuhui — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:14:23 +0000

Here is what I heard from a friend last night:
To manage your trust with friend or co-workers, you need to watch for when do you agree/disagree with the person, and whether the opinion you agree/disagree with turns out to be correct or not. Here is the four scenarios:

you agree, and it is correct – the trust goes up;
you agree, and it is wrong – the trust goes down;
you disagree, and it is correct – the trust goes down;
you disagree, and it is wrong – the trust goes down;

So according to this, your best course of action is to voice your support only when you truly believe the opinion is correct (or it can stand the trial of time). In all other situations you should keep quiet.

Meeting rule #1

Xuhui — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 04:41:15 +0000

There are lots of things they don’t teach in business schools – for example meeting etiquette.
Here is what I learned in the hard way – the bigger the meeting, the shorter and less you should speak.
Why? the more you speak, statistically more chances that one of several things will happen:
1) you spoke of something someone else hated;
2) someone misheard/misinterpreted what you said;
3) the meeting is running behind, the boss looks at the watch and looks at who’s still talking endlessly.
4) you successfully finished your long speech, only to find out that you didn’t know some key counter-evidences about to be presented next – now against you.

Anyway, you should reserve your long-winded speech for those coveted one-on-one meetings. Bosses hate other people talking endlessly in those big meetings. Well, unless the boss is your friend or supporter. In that case, he or she will be embarassed instead.

—————-
I’ve never really thought too much about the blog name I picked – just the three things I think about a lot.
It just hit me today – I happened to have picked three very statistically male-dominant topics.
Well, I don’t want to get into any psychology stuff – I just feel that I get to explore the things in life that I really like, and I’m very happy.

Marriage

Xuhui — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 23:37:47 +0000

I think marriage is like management – you have to make many small compromises in order to keep the bigger goal.
Dating is like shopping for a new car – more based on physical attraction, chemistry and compatibility. While if you take the same attitude toward marriage, it won’t last very long. Marriage should be like an investment – you invest in love that pays divident every step of the way. We all get older every year. However, the investment we put into our love makes that relationship deeper, richer and more enjoyable every day. And a great relationship makes us younger.

Floating Tech Factory

Xuhui — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 06:31:19 +0000

Recent issue of Fortune magazine has an interesting story (google: seacode offshore). A former tanker captain and an IT veteran teamed up to build a computer outsourcing company on a used cruise ship 3 miles off the shore of California.
By international convention, the ship and its crew (software engineers from India, China, etc) follows the law and tax code of the registering country (Panama for example). The crew are even allowed short shore leaves. They will work 6 days/week, take 2 months off for every 4 months work. There’s not much time difference for US customers. Even face-2-face meetings are now very cheaply possible.
Such a briliant business idea.

Expectation vs. Reality

Xuhui — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 06:37:21 +0000

I’ve found an interesting phenomenon in business – expectation is far more powerful than reality.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but in business, a million dollar in the future is far more powerful than a million dollar today. Let’s say you have a vendor that want to get $1 million from you, they will do everything possible to please you. However, the moment you actually pay them, is the moment the situation changes from expectation to reality. There’s the $1 million, no more to be made. Bye bye.
A potential of growth, a potential to gain big business, a potential to build great things, these are the magic phrases to get people mesmorized, justified to spend spend spend. A business target hit, a piece of equipment bought, a promise actually delivered, on the other hand, become doomed as “the past”, “sunk cost”, “yesterday’s home run doesn’t win today’s ball game”.
This also applies to those hot-shot high-tech companies, their stocks were worth billions while making no profit whatsoever. However, the moment they announce that they are profitable the stock tanks. Why is that? Because at that moment all the unrealistic expectations die. So go back to our $1 million question. It is always better to pay your vendor only half million or less, so there’s the “promise” of more to come. Of course, vendors always want to sell you more than you need (an extra pair of shoes, an extra year on your contract). Why? It’s really not about getting more money from you. But rather, they want to saturate you and forget about you so that:
1) sellers can move on to the next prospective client;
2) there’s no worry that you are going to any competitors – customers who have bought three pairs of shoes are much much less likely to buy another pair.