GeekMBA360

I rarely read poems. I guess I lack the sense and sensibilities to appreciate poems. 🙂 However, I was re-reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger this weekend, and came across the poem “if” that Charlie Munger has always admired. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr.. Munger – if you haven’t […]

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Business Week has an interesting article about Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawk. I have to admit that I’m neither a Seattle Seahawk Fan nor a USC Trojan fan. However, I really enjoyed this quote from Pete Carroll: “I had been head coach of the New York Jets and the New England Patriots. […]

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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 […]

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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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