Computer screens and highways are fraternal twins.
Highways
During rush hour, typical inefficiencies that arise can often be solved by adding additional lanes. Over time, however, the practice of adding real estate loses its effect, resulting in cluttered roads. Somehow, as more lanes are added, more cars miraculously manage to fill in the extra space.
Computer Screens
On small screens, typical inefficiencies that arise can often be solved by setting a higher resolution. Over time, however, the practice of adding real estate loses its effect, resulting in cluttered screens. Somehow, as higher resolutions are set, the same application windows miraculously manage to fill in the extra space.
This is something that city planners and dual-monitor-wielding programmers refuse to admit.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older, but I’m starting to understand where media companies are coming from when they say they want to block (or at least require payment from) Google for serving up their content.
It’s not like these companies are saying, “Give people information for free? No way!” They simply want to stop Google from making billions of dollars off their content without any compensation.
Right now, Google crawls content from various sources, then puts AdSense ads next to them. This equates to pure profit generation off the intellectual property of others. This is the stuff us “freedom of information” folks go nuts about, yet most of said folks are typically staunch opponents of media conglomerates.
It’s pretty surprising that Google has been able to get away with this for so long, as on paper, it’s tantamount to someone copy/pasting an article and reaping all the benefit when site visitors click their ads.
marco:
Alex Payne, in Don’t Be A Hero:
If someone is working at four in the morning, something is deeply wrong. Figure out what’s broken and delegate the work out evenly across your team such that it doesn’t happen again. Don’t pat your hero on the back for “pulling another late-nighter”.
This is one reason why, when looking for a job a few years ago, I didn’t consider working for any company whose job description implied (or stated) that I’d be expected to work extremely long hours regularly and not have a family life. Such companies are either run by “heroes” or expect to hire one. (Usually for the same salary as a nine-to-fiver and with a trivial equity stake.)
I resent the commonly held belief that this is an unavoidable part of “startup culture”. (It’s completely avoidable.) Such beliefs encourage workaholism, especially among young people, and cause poor-quality products, employee burnout, and high turnover.
I don’t want to be a part of any company that’s so poorly managed, or simply so cheap, that employees are expected to forego a healthy lifestyle. No job is worth that.
I completely agree. Two guys cranking away 18 hours a day building the next “big thing” in their dorm room is different from crafting a well-structured business in one’s mid-twenties. The two don’t translate, and shouldn’t be expected to.
