Netflix’s Excellent Vacation Policy
As the company explains in its “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture”, a 128-slide PowerPoint presentation that has spread like samizdat literature on the internet: “We should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days worked. Just as we don’t have a nine to five day policy, we don’t need a vacation policy.”
So the company scrapped its formal plan. Today, Netflix’s roughly 600 salaried employees can vacation any time they desire for as long as they want – provided that their managers know where they are and that their work is covered.
This ultra flexible, freedom-intensive approach to holiday time hasn’t exactly hurt the company. Launched in 1999, Netflix now has market cap of nearly $7bn (£4.5bn). Meanwhile, its chief rival, the video rental chain Blockbuster, last month was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
Review: Jack: Straight From The Gut
Made the mistake of reading Jack Welch’s book. It’s a terribly written, name dropping tome that reads like a list – there’s not much insight or meat here.
That said, I’m not sure how interesting the story of a guy who inherited a very strong balance sheet and a huge management team can be. Classic bureaucratic ninja rode the corporate ladder. Hiring didn’t matter as much as firing did (there’s always someone to take up the role.) Globalization happened.
Welch is the penultimate classic CEO. It’s a story about the business of business. That’s why this book is incredibly boring.
Review: Tasker
Tasker is an amazing application for the Android platform.
Basically, you’re able to se up automated tasks (called profiles) for different conditions. EX: for a particular location, say work or school, automatically switch to vibrate.There are some really cool instances of this tool at play.
Here’s what’s missing (other than a website that doesn’t suck – actually, the UI in general needs work):
- An ecosystem. What would be really, really cool would be the ability to build and share profiles in a totally seamless way. Created an automated way of reading your calendar and sending happy birthday emails? Great. Throw it in the so-called task-market (for dollars) or task-pool (for reputation). You earn either, and I get added functionality on my phone.
Executed correctly, this could fill in the gap for an Android innovation engine.
Review: Too Big To Fail
Just finished Andrew Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail. Sorkin does a pretty good job covering the event as it happened, with minimal commentary and analysis. On the one hand, that makes it easy and quick to read. It does mean you have to go elsewhere for smart analysis. (I’m headed over to ECONned and perhaps The Big Short
Anyway, you learn a couple things:
- A group of less than 100 guys (who all incestuously worked for one another) decided the fate of the world.
- They had no fucking clue what they were doing. Especially in regards to valuation and information management (the Fed didn’t know how big any of the holes were, Paulson had no idea how to handle strategic communications but was driven by it anyway). So they made it up as they went.
- We would have all been better off if Paulson and his merry band of banksters wasn’t running things. The emphasis wasn’t on keeping the financial system stable so you and I could go into work tomorrow, (The – currently misnamed – financial services industry should be like plumbing. Something in the background that facilitates you and I going about our business.), the team was instead focused on keeping the financial circlejerk-bubble booming.
Seaswarm: MIT’s Autonomous, Oil-Cleaning Swarm
Seaswarm. Unfortunately, this is priced at $20k a pop. I’d like to see the plans unleashed to the hacker community. (And watch the precipitous pricing drop thereafter.)
Economic Hitmen Inside the Gates Foundation Invest in Monsanto
Bizarre sense of morality. Increases holdings from $360,000 to ~$23 million. Monsanto’s track record with the third world is classic evil.
On Google
On the one side, the Larry/Sergey Google that makes amazing cool things — the search engine, Gmail, Android. On the other, the Schmidt Google that, in its efforts to serve ads as efficiently as possible, no longer seems concerned with the traditional Western concept of personal privacy.
Nonlinear Gameplay
I really dig this trend. Would be a blast to be able to tunnel anywhere in a MMOFPS. (Though I haven’t played one in a long time.)
Life Goes On
An excellent description of how daily life in Somalia still works, albeit in an extremely complex environment.
However, this image belies the reality of emerging national and sub-national political entities that have ensured a degree of civilian security in particular places at particular times as people have adapted their behaviour and livelihoods to cope with insecurity and even to profit from the opportunities that conflict throws up.
“There is life in the midst of all the chaos,” says Abdulkadir. “Not everyone has left. We cannot leave the country to the dogs.”
The Tangibles of Decline
Milk bags rather than jugs/cartons.
Kevin Kelley on Reading
Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A new idea or unfamiliar fact will provoke a reflex to do something: to research the term, to query your screen “friends” for their opinions, to find alternative views, to create a bookmark, to interact with or tweet the thing rather than simply contemplate it.
Book reading strengthened our analytical skills, encouraging us to pursue an observation all the way down to the footnote. Screen reading encourages rapid pattern-making, associating this idea with another, equipping us to deal with the thousands of new thoughts expressed every day. The screen rewards, and nurtures, thinking in real time.
Infographic: Communism and the Financial Crisis
See Wifi Range in Augmented Reality
Wireless in the world 2 from timo on Vimeo.
On Energy Security
On LifeBoxing and Fungi
This is pretty cool. It’s cardboard box lined with seeds and particular fungi to accelerate growth. Whats even more interesting though, is their backend product, the seed mix.
H/T to Greendemon.
