Apple needs to become a public cloud provider. This will be an ambitious undertaking because frankly, they’re very far behind Amazon. But if they did so, it would be hugely successful. Because these days, every app you see ends up…
Author: pierce
To Office for IPad or not to Office for iPad
So there were rumors this week that Microsoft was going to ship a version of Office for iPad. I have no opinion one way or another whether they will or not. But I admit to being intensely curious about…
Why iBook Author is Ho-Hum
So professionally, this was an interesting week for me. Wednesday, Chegg shipped their new eReader which is the project I’ve been working on since August. It’s HTML5, and its a faithful representation of the books (more on why that’s important…
Writing a Project Charter saved my butt
So Chegg launched our new eReader today so I thought I would take a moment to talk about writing a Project Charter per Johanna Rothman’s excellent book on project management. Johanna recommends that for every project you sit down and…
Job Hunting Sucks
A friend of mine who is job hunting (he’s looking for a job in Software QA if you know of any positions) emailed me this morning for help with his job hunt. Here’s my tough-love answer: Your job right now…
Always Learning: The Good Will Hunting Method
There’s a scene in the movie Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon tells this stuck-up guy in a bar: ” You blew $150,000 on an education you could have gotten for a $1.50 in late charges at the public library.”…
Hiring Athletes instead of Bigfoot
I was talking with a recruiter about a position at their company the other day and after reading the job requisition I commented to her that it was a “Bigfoot” requisition; the kind of req that reads “Must be a…
Job Hunting: What I’ve learned so far
Background: This is the first time I’ve ever really applied myself fully to hunting for a job. Looking back, I’d always done a mediocre effort at it while simultaneously working full time. Job hunting requires 20-30 hours/week of work…
CrockPot Agile: AdHoc to Agile in 10 Steps
Ok, so you’re working at a non-Agile shop, possibly even a shop with bad project management. How do you get them to being Agile if you’re not the CEO or VP of Engineering? By doing something I call: CrockPot Agile…
Job Hunting is Like Dating
If I call the recruiter at the company too soon I’m desperate. If I wait too long, I’m not interested.