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  Why I Quit My Job to Start a Tech Company

Back in November of 2006, before NY Mag and TimeOut put startups on the cover, before the “tech bubble”, before Twitter and Foursquare were popular, before working at a startup in NY was considered a reasonable thing to do, I was a private equity investor for a $1.6 billion fund called Quadrangle Group. It was just my third year out of college and I made a little over $250,000. For a Brazilian immigrant who spent most of his childhood kind of worried he would have to do physica...

   Start,Company,Creative,Innovation,Techno     2011-08-16 08:38:35

  Failed merge and acquisition cases in the Internet history

Bebo founder sold Bebo with 850 million US dollars in 2008, but later he bought it back with just 1 million US dollars. This news lets us think about those failed merge and acquisition cases in Internet history. Let's summarize some of them here. 1. Bebo Buyer : AOL Acquisition price : 650 million US dollars Sold price : 1 million US dollars Loss: 849 million US dollars In 2008, AOL was still belong to Time Warner. It made a decision to acquire the third largest social networking site Bebo, The...

   Merge and acquisition,Loss,MySpace     2013-07-03 08:37:13

  Microsoft forms a new subsidiary focused on open source called Microsoft Open Technologies

Microsoft once again changes its attitude and intends to set up an open technology subsidiaries in order to promote the formulation of open-source projects and standards.The new company name is Microsoft Open Technologies and Jean Paoli, Microsoft executives will be the president of the new company. The company will also form interoperability strategy team in the future. The newly established company will have about 50-75 employees.Over the years, Microsoft has been considered to be the rival of...

   Microsft,Open source,Microsoft Open Technologies     2012-04-13 06:10:45

  Why does Symbian collapse?

On 24th January, Nokia announces a disappointing news that they would give up Symbian. The 808 PureView released last year will be its last Symbian model.  Symbian was born in 1998, it was supported by the then three mobile giants : Sony Ericson, Motorola and Nokia after its birth, later Samsung and LG also joined the Symbian camp. In 2000, the first Symbian model in the world Ericoson R380 was released, in 20006, there were over 100 million Symbian handphones on the market. But in 2007, t...

   Nokia, Symbian, Collapse, Analysis     2013-01-28 03:06:09

  Pay Your Programmers $200/hour

If you are hiring programmers, you should pay them $200/hr. This breaks through otherwise impenetrable psychological barriers, helps solve the agency problem, and ensures you are only hiring programmers when you really need them. Expectations $200/hr is an open declaration of your expectations. It states that you are expecting to hire both a professional and an expert in the field. As a programmer, I treat contracts that pay me $200/hr differently from jobs/contracts that pay me $65/hr eq...

   Salary,Programmer,Responsibility,Urgency,Value     2011-12-31 15:34:57

  Automate Everything

Performing manual, repetitive tasks enrages me. I used to think this was a corollary of being a programmer, but I’ve come to suspect (or hope) that this behaviour is inherent in being human. But being able to hack together scripts simply makes it much easier to go from a state of rage to a basic solution in a very small amount of time. As a side point, this is one of the reasons that teaching the basics of programming in schools is so important. It’s hard to think of any j...

   Automate,Email,Repeative     2012-02-07 06:21:19

  Transparency in Cloud Services

37signals recently launched public “Uptime Reports” for their applications (announcement). The reaction on Hacker News was rather tepid, but I think it’s a positive development, and I applaud 37signals for stepping forward. Reliability of cloud applications is a real concern, and there’s not nearly enough hard data out there. Not all products are equally reliable; even within 37signals, the new reports show a 3:1 variation in downtime across apps. That said, ...

   Cloud,Transapency,37signals,Announcement     2012-01-10 07:24:02

  How to ask questions as an interviewee

Many people think that interview is a single side selection, in fact, interview is a two sides selection process. Not only the company selects you, but also you select the company. Interview provides a chance for both the company and you to know about each other. While the company is assessing you, you should also assess the company. The interviewers also know this, so they have the mental preparation and look forward to your questions and they are prepared to answer your questions. So do not w...

   Interview,Question,Interviewee     2012-09-02 08:24:51

  Importance of Side Projects

Side projects are important for a few reasons. Programming is a creative process. Side projects allow programming without deadlines or restraints. Side projects allow programming in an exploratory way. Explore new technologies Every day there are more and more bleeding edge technologies coming out. A side project is a great place to try them out. There’s no reason to worry about bugs or performance issues because it’s just a side project. You’re not depending on the ...

   Side project,Creative idea,Dealine,Scratch,Launch     2011-11-28 03:17:22

  Do designers need code?

So many problems in software occur because programmers and designers don't communicate well all the time. Why don't more designers learn to code themselves or have engineers build abstractions better suited to them? People's minds work in different ways, they can process thoughts differently, solve problems in completely different but equally valid ways. It's a mistake to assume everyone should possess the same skill set.  Also not everyone should be a full stack engineer although full stac...

   Design,Coding     2014-01-07 06:22:52

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