GeekMBA360

Last week I came across an interesting article on the chain of events led to General McChrystal’s downfall. Here is my favorite quote from the article: As an executive, Obama has little tolerance for what he calls "unforced errors" — mistakes that are entirely preventable. In that regard, McChrystal’s team had committed an unforced error [...]

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Have you wondered how performance reviews are conducted behind-the-scene? When I was an individual contributor, I bought into what management told me — setting SMART goals in the beginning of the year. Work hard throughout the year. Write thorough and insightful self-reviews and peer reviews. Get 360-degree feedback from colleagues. And I’ll get a review [...]

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Ninety-five percent off. That’s the steep discount big-time CEO and entrepreneur Ken was able to get from negotiating with a large enterprise software company. I used to work for Ken’s company. I once talked to the business development guy in the other company who negotiated with Ken. He told me Ken was so brutal in [...]

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I’m usually a reserved and calm person. But, I cried really hard once at work a little bit over a decade ago. I still remember it vividly. At that time, I just started working as Associates Product Manager at a medium-sized enterprise software company. My job was to manage the Application Programming Interface (API) product. [...]

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I continued to receive feedback from laid-off Microsoft employees after I published Microsoft Laid-off Employees spoke up! — Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results – Microsoft and Microsoft second round layoff satisfaction survey results. Here is a few thoughtful comments that caught my attention: "Microsoft should have let the DOJ break the company in pieces years ago. [...]

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I sincerely hope that someone in Yahoo’s product management organization will see this post. Or, please forward this post to Carol Bartz. By the way, I’m not alone on this – Henry Blodget had also written “Deal Carol Bartz: You Need to Fix Yahoo Mail.” I agree with most of Henry’s points. Additionally, I would [...]

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In February we published Microsoft Laid-off employees layoff satisfaction survey result. On May 5, Microsoft had its second round of layoffs, let 3,000+ employees go. A number of former Microsoft employees had filled out our survey after the May 5th layoff. Below is a summary of the survey result of Microsoft layoff round II. Which [...]

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Rose is the VP of Account Management at an Internet start-up. She has a team of ten people reporting to her. When she runs into product managers, developers, and operational folks in the company, she always asks: "what have you done today for help my team?". When someone asked why one of her accounts is [...]

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A few years ago, right before I graduated from business school, I saw a job ad from a GMAT preparation company — it’s looking for GMAT instructors. One of the job requirements was that they only hire people who had scored in the 99th percentile on an actual GMAT test. It’s one of their key [...]

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I studied computer science for four years in college. I worked as software developer for several years. But, nowadays, when someone asks me if I’m technical. My answer is "no" — I have been working in product management for eight years. I work with developers everyday. I still play with various technologies at my spare [...]

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