There is Lazy and there is LinkedIn Lazy
LinkedIn is a great tool, but it has also facilitated a new era of laziness in terms of meeting people and making connections.
My favourite email that I receive from LinkedIn is the following;
"So and so has listed you as a colleague and wants to connect with you". No, I'm pretty sure you don't work here (doing a quick look around the office I don't see your face anywhere) and I'm doing a quick run through in my head... and yeah I've never met you either.
Being a colleague is the first option in the "How do you know this person?" options list. So everyone picks it AND they all leave the default message in there without giving any context as to why this person might be contacting you. Think about it, if I met you at a party, we both had a beer in hand and I went up to you and said - "Hey, Jeff, we've worked together, let's connect." - Jeff's first response would probably be - "WTF? And no". And it should be, because you wouldn't do that in person, it would be more like - "Hey Jeff, oh you work at Intertrode Inc and you do C#. Are you happy there because I have some blah, blah, blah" - you get the idea. And remember this is a limit on how much you can write so its not like you're going to write a novel, all you need is a sentence of two.
Sorry recruiters but you guys are the worst for this, not all, but unfortunately a significant majority. By far the worst invite I have received is one addressed to someone else, when I responding saying I'm not that person the response back was - "No, that was meant for you", not even a sorry or oops for the mistake... why yes... I would love to work with someone who can't even write down my name.
The sad thing is that there are so many other options below this this option which would provide so much more value to their cause - we share the same groups (I use this one a lot when introducing myself to people to give some context to the request - i.e., this is how I found you, I'm not some crazy stalker), classmate (never used it), done business together, friend or just plain old I don't know you, but I have your email address. Its really not that hard to do.
If we break this out with some simple Math;
The Lazy Way
Estimated Time to change a drop-down menu 5s
Estimated Time to write a custom message 0s
Total 5s
The New Way
Estimated Time to change a drop-down menu 5s
Estimated Time to write a custom message 60s
Total 65s
So using my keen skills in mathematics, it looks like writing a custom message would take approximately 60s more than not writing one. Whoa, Whoa, Whoa - yes I know you might be sending out a hundred of these types of invites on a daily basis and that could equate to an additional 1 hour and 40 minutes of extra work you'd have to do? Well put it this way, when I receive an invite (or an InMail) from someone wanting to connect and giving me some additional context to why they want to connect, this piques my interest greatly, they go to the top of the list and I'm more likely to respond immediately to their request.
So really, the question becomes - are you willing to invest an extra 20s - 60s to really meet someone and get put to the top of their list? Or are you happy with rolling the dice?
The Patents Cometh
I have an idea for a structured, dense-like object, solid in form, that has extensions coming from it. These extensions will be in random formation and will sprout their own extensions depending upon the execution of the algorithm. From those extensions fauna shall grow on a pre-determined cycle that interfaces with the weather patterns of the region where said structure is installed. Each structure shall be unique in nature, no two being the same. It will be glorious... I will call it a trei.
Now let's patent that badboy and go sue some forests for these knock-offs they are calling "trees".
There is an explosion taking place in the software industry (and/or implosion depending on how you want to look at it), where companies are bought solely for the stock in their patent portfolio (not for actually what the company can do) and seamingly disconnected companies are suing one another for infringements on patents.
I was doing my regular blog roll this yesterday morning and came across this article. I was stuck on this line for about 20 minutes - "Patents are the defense mechanism for capitalism.". Really? In a world where we are trying to marshal the growth of openness and networking through social media and other avenues we still keep a desk drawer full of papers to go - "aaah aah aaaaah, you can't do that". I thought the idea behind all innovation was to leap frog people's ideas and continually improve decrepid systems making them more functional and useable then they previously were? How do you do this? You build a better mouse trap. You are still going to have tenets of the original design - i.e., its goal is to catch a mouse and there might be some spring-like action to it, but apart from that they would differ. And then shouldn't the original company be all like - "Well we built the first mouse trap, so let's go build a better mouse trap then so and so?" Isn't this where innovation begins - find a problem, fix it, release it, keep making it better.
I'm not a Patent Lawyer, I don't know all the ins and outs of the system (and I have no desire to be). I recently had the opportunity to speak with a trademark/patent lawyer this past week who basically said - "I hate filing patents". He made a real interesting comment that the work involved in procuring a patent is not in the process itself, but in the marketing of the patent and the enforcement. Where companies originally started as doing this to defend themselves, they are now using them as revenue generating models to account for a growing percentage of their income. Translation - some companies survival is becoming based upon the execution by of your idea by someone else. This isn't a defense against capitalism, this is laziness in its simplest form. And if you are spending millions to enforce patents, what else could you have done with that money? Build a better product, streamline a new process, throw a party for your company?
I've been involved in a few internal mail threads related to patents, I immediately deleted them because the proposed content was so generic that if ever enforced would limit developers in doing their actual job. Can you imagine as a Developer, having an idea, you think its great, you want to run with it, but before you drop a lick of code your manager asks you to go check the patent database to see if one already exists. If it does, sorry not going to do it, if it doesn't, patent it and sit back and wait for the trolling to begin... en masse. You might think its at the far right at the spectrum, but this is where we are headed.
I really hope this trend ends at some point, but I don't see it happening soon. My favourite part of coding has always been sitting in a room with a few people, thinking up ideas, trying them out all while working toward a goal to release a great product. If that mindset is changing to coming up with an idea, filing a patent, waiting for the patent, trying out the idea, giving up (because we invested more in the patent process then the actual job and now need to drop people) and then waiting for someone else to do it to collect revenue... that just seems wrong, you don't deserve it, you didn't earn it.
Oddly enough after writing this yesterday I cam across this article on CNET, timing is everything.
Life according to SQL
Sleep is not coming tonight, so I give you this little ditty...
Sometimes you think you can solve everything in one fell swoop.
SELECT * FROM Accounts
But then you realize you need to focus on what you really need.
SELECT Name, EmailAddress FROM Accounts
WHERE Id = 650743
Most of the time you are going to need help from others.
SELECT * FROM Accounts A
INNER JOIN Contacts B on A.ContactId = B.ContactId
INNER JOIN Activities C on A.AccountId = C.AccountId
WHERE Id = 65743
But try to include too many people and you'll get nowhere.
SELECT * FROM Accounts A
INNER JOIN Contacts B on A.ContactId = B.ContactId
INNER JOIN Activities C on A.AccountId = C.AccountId
INNER JOIN Cases S on A.AccountId = S.AccountId
INNER JOIN Purchases P on A.AccountId = P.AccountId
INNER JOIN Orders O on A.AccountId = O.AccountId
WHERE Id = 65743
In the end, if you over complicate things you'll end up worst then you started.
DECLARE @sql nvarchar(2000)
SELECT @sql = 'SELECT O.OrderID, SUM(OD.UnitPrice * OD.Quantity)
FROM Orders O
JOIN OrderInformation OI ON O.OrderID = OI.OrderID
WHERE O.OrderDate BETWEEN @Start AND @End
AND EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM OrderDetails OII
WHERE O.OrderID = OII.OrderID
AND OII.ProductID = @ProductId)
GROUP BY O.OrderID'
EXEC sp_executesql @sql, N'@Start datetime, @End datetime, @ ProductId int',
'19980201', '19980228', 76
When a simple solution could have been right in front of you all along.
SELECT OrderId, SUM(UnitPrice * UnitQuantity) AS TOTAL
FROM OrderInformation
WHERE OrderDate BETWEEN @Start AND @END and ProductId = @ProductId
The 10 minute fix for the 3 month problem
For almost 3 months now I have had this ongoing drip in my new shower. It was fine for 5 months when it was nothing but drywall and and sub-floor, but shortly after installing the shower pan, the mebrane, all that tile and then the door itself the shower heads started to leak...
And I didn't know why.
This was killing me. I talked to the guy at the local Home Depot to try and get some insight into what might be wrong, could it be something really, really small that I forgot to do? No luck.
I then emailed the manufacturer who offered a Life Time Warranty on the product (and they do), I explained the situation, they emailed me the new parts - free of charge. So far so good. I received them about 6 weeks ago, and they sat there on my dresser, mocking me each time I got up to get my socks in the morning and in the evening when I had to move them to put down my Ipad.
Mocking me to dare and try to install them on my own.
Everynight for the past 3 months when I have gone to bed I could hear a faint... Drip, Drip, Drip... reminding me of how I was too chicken to fix the problem. Good Night Greg - You "drip, drip, drip".
You are not a plumber, you don't have the experience, you don't know what you are doing - your pathetic attempts will only end in you to putting a hole through the pipes, flooding your subfloor and causing you to rip that beautiful tile and membrane that took you 4 solid weekends to install and cost so much.
I had to bite the bullet this weekend, my permit is about to expire and I need to get this fixed so I can get my final inspection done. So Saturday night, I manned up, turned off the water supply, got out the replacement parts, and replaced them. Turned the water back on, tested the shower heads, no leaks inside the walls, turned them off and...
No Drip, Drip, Drip.
I checked about 5 more times last night before I went to bed and again this morning and throughout the day, it was dry - there was no more drips, no more leaks, no more uncertainty, no more problem.
And all it took was 10 minutes, for both taps, in total. Yes that's right, I internalized the fear of screwing up for the past 6 weeks for a job that took me 10 minutes and over half of that time was spent trying to line up the screws when putting it back together (totally separate from the problem).
It's amazing how, despite all of our advances, we still have the ability to internalize so much fear for the unknown and deconstruct "what we don't know" so analytically versus constructing "what we do know", how we will learn from this experience and take action immediately to solve the problem.
Is this what happens when projects slow down when new features and problems are introduced into the mix? I've seen projects and features pushed because of the unknown, we don't know, it sounds big, lots of unknowns, we're not sure where to start. Watch for it the next time you see this happening in a meeting, feature review or in your own code... the fix could turn out to be 10 minutes of your time.
LinkedIn's Power Unleashed
There is a great article circulating the internet today on LinkedIn's profile on What it Takes to be an Entrepreneur. It is a short read, providing some cool insight into the demographics of entrepreneurs... but here's the kicker - there was no survey requested, they didn't send out a bunch of InMails to get people to fill in a form, there was no email campaign. All the data they needed came from the activity of its members. It was all from you and me and everyone else on LinkedIn.
If you thought LinkedIn was all about Networking and Connections and Following people... think again... its all about the Data. There are thousands of other studies of industries which could be done based on the data and activity of users on LinkedIn. Same goes for Facebook and Twitter and even Foursquare... it's all about the Data.
