Saturday, October 13, 2012

The GE Work-Out : How to Implement GE's Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy & Attacking Organizational Proble: Dave Ulrich,Steve Kerr,Ron Ashkenas: 0639785334248: Amazon.com: Books

The GE Work-Out : How to Implement GE's Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy & Attacking Organizational Proble: Dave Ulrich,Steve Kerr,Ron Ashkenas: 0639785334248: Amazon.com: Books:

Many companies have adapted Jack Welch's now-famous strategies for running a business. Taking advantage of Welch's popularity (and expertise), this handbook lays out instructions for implementing GE's "Work-Out" method. Flexible in execution, the method calls for collecting large teams of employees for defining tough business decisions, then breaking into smaller teams to develop solutions. The small teams then meet with a manager in a "town meeting" to discuss their recommendations. The result is change that's brought about by employees themselves. Consultants Ulrich and Ashkenas, along with Kerr (a managing director of Goldman Sachs) were brought together by Welch to create the "Work-Out" method.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Leadership - Frederick Smith (7) - FORTUNE

10 Fortune 500 military CEOs - Frederick Smith (7) - FORTUNE: "Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team"

'via Blog this'

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Digg Founder Kevin Rose’s Path to Successful Investor - Digits - WSJ

Digg Founder Kevin Rose’s Path to Successful Investor - Digits - WSJ: not Digg itself but through angel investing in all consumer internet companies

'via Blog this'

Meet the New Boss: Big Data - WSJ.com

Meet the New Boss: Big Data - WSJ.com: "Meet the New Boss: Big Data"

'via Blog this'

Inside Paul Allen's Quest To Reverse Engineer The Brain - Forbes

Inside Paul Allen's Quest To Reverse Engineer The Brain - Forbes:

'via Blog this'

Software training online-tutorials for Adobe, Microsoft, Apple & more

Software training online-tutorials for Adobe, Microsoft, Apple & more:

'via Blog this'

Course Catalog | Coursera

Course Catalog | Coursera:

'via Blog this'

New sliding jetliner seat designed to speed up boarding - USATODAY.com

New sliding jetliner seat designed to speed up boarding - USATODAY.com:

'via Blog this'

Conformity

Conformity:

'via Blog this'

Sunday, September 16, 2012

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic:

'via Blog this'

My Life as a TaskRabbit - Businessweek

My Life as a TaskRabbit - Businessweek: business idea

'via Blog this'

Chobani Founder Hamdi Ulukaya And The Greek Yogurt Craze - Business Insider

Chobani Founder Hamdi Ulukaya And The Greek Yogurt Craze - Business Insider:

'via Blog this'

How Dietrich Mateschitz Ignored The Haters And Created The Top Energy Drink On The Planet - Business Insider

How Dietrich Mateschitz Ignored The Haters And Created The Top Energy Drink On The Planet - Business Insider:

'via Blog this'
Never Eat Alone - Ferrazzi

How do you get in to Harvard & become a master networker from being born to a steel mill worker in rural area?

He caddied at the country club near by. Seeing and learning from successful businessmen. Working hard. Helping others. Initiative and Drive.

Getting angry at being poor. Getting drive to become successful. Got into private school with scholarship. Being a small fish in big pond does help you form your character. Being teased by rich kids around you for the clothes that you wear, car that you drive, etc will only toughen you up. If nothing, it will make you realize your place. Make you feel disgusted with the current state. Only when you recognize that you are in deep shit will you normally get your backside off the table and do something about it.

Working hard to join the one percent club.

Monday, September 10, 2012

List of emotions - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of emotions - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

'via Blog this'

How To Be A Better SalesMan Or SalesPerson | Selling Techniques | Learn to Sell Like Crazy

How To Be A Better SalesMan Or SalesPerson | Selling Techniques | Learn to Sell Like Crazy:

'via Blog this'

How to Be a Great Salesman: 10 steps - wikiHow

How to Be a Great Salesman: 10 steps - wikiHow:

'via Blog this'

How To Be The Next Steve Jobs - Forbes

How To Be The Next Steve Jobs - Forbes:

'via Blog this'

10 Leadership Lessons From Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn: - Forbes

10 Leadership Lessons From Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn: - Forbes:

'via Blog this'

Megan McArdle on the Coming Burst of the College Bubble - Newsweek and The Daily Beast

Megan McArdle on the Coming Burst of the College Bubble - Newsweek and The Daily Beast: College worth it? How bubbles are formed? Free money. What happens if everyone gets a college degree?
What all am I getting in return for the tuition that I pay?
Who can handle money better, me or my government? Who will be more responsible?
Should you send your son to Harvard?
Adapt or perish?

'via Blog this'

How To Be The Next Steve Jobs - Forbes

How To Be The Next Steve Jobs - Forbes:

'via Blog this'

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Industry-recognized Certification - Cloudera University

Industry-recognized Certification - Cloudera University:

'via Blog this'

Browse Library | Safari Books Online

Browse Library | Safari Books Online: Learn, online library

'via Blog this'

Hadoop: The Definitive Guide: Tom White: Amazon.com: Books

Hadoop: The Definitive Guide: Tom White: Amazon.com: Books: Learn Hadoop

'via Blog this'

Pattern | CLiPS

Pattern | CLiPS: Python pattern matching module, data mining

'via Blog this'

Udacity - 21st Century University

Udacity - 21st Century University: Learn coding

'via Blog this'

Millionaires of the 50 States from NETSTATE.COM

Millionaires of the 50 States from NETSTATE.COM:

'via Blog this'

10 Salary Negotiation Mistakes To Avoid | HR Blog | Human Resources | Be Happy & Live Happy

10 Salary Negotiation Mistakes To Avoid | HR Blog | Human Resources | Be Happy & Live Happy:

'via Blog this'

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

What's the difference between Abinitio and Hadoop?

Disclaimer: I have not google'd this yet! I wanted to jot down what I know as of now.

Before going into differences, I can not stop by think about similarities between : both offer parellel processing.

While Abinitio was doing massive parallel processing long before Hadoop came into existence, it was 1) costly to buy licenses and 2) it was running on enterprise-grade hardware.

Hadoop made massively parallel processing available to masses. It did this by 1) being open source and 2) being able to run on commodity hardware. Since commodity hardware is not very reliable, Hadoop solved this problem by providing built-in fault tolerance

Monday, July 30, 2012

Management Tips

Making the team accountable
Put procedures in place to make the goals, metrics transparent. The team mates will hold each other accountable. Manager does not have to take the burden on himself to track everybody's work. Let the team mates compete. There is no better motivator than to be able to swag in front of the peers.

Delegation
Manager does not have to attend all the meetings and plan the details of each and every team member. Thats micro-management. You can not grow up if you keep looking down. Organize the team into groups and assign leads. Give the leads the ownership. Tell them clearly what you expect of them.

Managing up and front
Be the salesman. Sell your value to senior management and customers. Its the individual contributor's responsibility to get the tasks done. The manager / leader's job is not to do the tasks but to get it done, promote the team, find out what customers want

Communication
Speak the truth and seek the truth. Have confidence.

Decision Making
When the answer is not "hell yeah!", brainstorm and look deeper for "hell yeah" solutions. Sometimes its gray, then write down three to five options with pros and cons and pick the best.

Goal setting
Stretch goals; clarity; measurable

Metrics
You can not manage what you can not measure. If you do nothing else, do this -- set up clear metrics and review them frequently. Take a baseline of KPIs when you start and measure the progress as time progresses.

Attracting and Retaining talent
"A" people want to work for "A" people. Strive your best to be "A" manager. Hire the best & ambitious and company will run great by itself.

Set up processes and procedures
Pick up best practices by looking around. Implement them.

Bring your whole self
If you love what you do, you will be dedicated. Results will automatically follow.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Scarcity increases the price

If you want to sell for high price and get more profits, look for products where there is natural scarcity or where you can create artificial scarcity.

Scarcity of time (you will get this deal only if you buy in the next few min). 
This information is available to only a few people.
There are only a few items left.
This service is available for only select few - e.g. Facebook
This content is exclusively available in this channel only

Stop loss analogy to Ventures

Just like you would have entry criteria and exit criteria well established before entering into a trade, same applies to starting or running businesses.

One needs to research various possible trades. Here remember the real estate analogy. You should look at 1000 listings; short list 100 plots to closer scrutiny online; pick the best 10 to go physically see. Decide on 1 to buy.

Use risk reward ratio for short listing. Establish absolute minimum risk-reward ratio. In trading, I need atleast 1:4.

At the time of the buy, you need to establish stop loss price. How much loss can you afford? How long are you willing to persist? What will you do if trade is going in the opposite direction? What will you do if trade is going in the favorable side? When will you cut your losses, put your tail between you legs and let go?

Car driving analogy to new ventures

When you first start learning to drive car, you are so nervous. You have to pay attention to 10+ things such as accelerator, brake, clutch, head lights, rain wipers, rear view mirror, side mirrors, radio, road signs, speed limits, people on the road, cops, other drivers, dashboard, speed, gas, etc. You can not focus on all these things at once.

Same thing applies to any new skill or venture. You will be like deer in the headlights in the beginning. There are so many variables.

However, just like car driving, with practice you will master all the tasks. They become subconscious. At expert level you dont even think or do anything consciously. Body just performs the action without your notice.

This is true with athletes. They practice so much that the muscle memory helps you play the moves subconsciously. At that level, you are able to focus on strategy or higher level tasks rather than tactical / lower level actions.

Entrepreneurship, Technology, Trading, Psychology

These are my passions:

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Technology,
  • Trading
  • Psychology

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Knowledge is like Chinese Bamboo

You keep planting seeds of knowledge. It may not seem to have much effect. But if you wait patiently, a time will come when seed will come out the ground and it will grow 10s os meters tall in a matter of no time.

Docile personality

Some birds can not be caged. Same way some people can not be "domesticated" neither with stick nor with carrot. However some timid people can be easily domesticated like cows. Given them grass and they will happily give milk which will be sold for a profit by the demesticator.

The docile people do not have confidence. They are afraid of everything. They do not think independently. They are like the third fish and lack initiative. They can not challenge status quo. They do not have the desire to lead or be at the top of stack. They conform to others' standards. They conform to society's expectations. They try to please others. They get happiness when others approve them. They crave others approval. They live for others. They are not alpha dogs.

Personality is the root cause of unhappiness

Hard working boss makes the team work harder. Both boss and the team does not seem to be happy or have work life balance. It seems like boss will feel guilty and can not sleep at night if does not get his team and himself to work to the fullest in return for taking the salary. This hinders creative activity. This boss will end in the same situation even if he is thrown in to a team where there is not a lot of work and every one has work life balance.

An unhappy person will be unhappy if he is poor or even if he is multimillionaire.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Creating and running companies

As Jobs says...your time is limited; dont live other's life, its imperative that I should start my own company and work for it. I was fearful about whether it would work or not, whether I could attract talent or not, whether I would be able to make a profit or not....all of it is bullshit. I just need to let go of my fear, burn the bridges behind and take a plunge. There should be no other option but to succeed and pursue passion. Listened to Gurbaksh Chahal yesterday and could not sleep well. I am just not me. Something is happening to me. I must not give any excuses anymore. I must find my passion and succeed at it. I want to dream and dream big. I MUST HAVE 50M IN MY POSSESSION in 5 YEARS.

Once I read about the various types of companies on NOLO, this time it was very clear to me that I should form an S corp. Not sure why I could not figure this out before. Probably I was READY to form a company. Now suddenly things fall in place. Nolo has tremendous amount of information about legal aspects related to start ups.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Cloud computing

Identified it as the "in thing". Wanted to "cloudify" existing businesses. Get some projects, perhaps federal projects and implement. It looks like lot of sales work which currently is not my forte. Pushing Hadoop/MapReduce to backburner for now.

However, I will need EC2 knowledge because its required for web and mobile programming.

Latest focus is on Mobile and web programming. Future is all about mobile. Instagram is a true inspiration. Its the match light for my new phase of life. It gives me new confidence that even non-CS guys can build successful software products. I am reading up on EC2, Linux, Apache, MySQL, Python (LAMP), Javascript, HTML5, CSS, iOS, Android

In the next 5 years, I want to get the money problem out of the way (GMPOW). I would like to enter the ultra high networth individual group. Want to have a networth of at least $50millions.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Web technologies

Built a maps app with Google Maps API, Python, Javascript, Google App Engine and HTML.

I also developed an Android app using Android SDK, Eclipse.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Psychology - Human behavior

  • Persuasion / motivating people
  • Independent thinking
  • Curiosity / Inquisitive
  • Be different - be the top 1%
  • Negotiation - life is all about negotiation

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Swimming

Took my son to the indoor swimming pool. Felt like making it a habit. Perhaps Sandeep can focus on Tennis and Swimming as extra-curricular activities. Once he is good, he could volunteer to teach younger kids. Games and volunteering will help in college admissions.

Tennis

Yesterday (Saturday) suddently I went and played Tennis with a friend of mine at 7:30am. I was very pleased with the experience. It was refreshing to wake up early on Saturday and play Tennis. I have this opinion that rich people play Tennis or Golf on weekend morning and have a nice breakfast. I experienced it. On top of it I played very good. Good forehand and backhand strokes. Looking forward to playing every Saturday!

Drawing and Painting

Felt like I missed out the drawing/painting classes in my childhood. Somehow I felt interested to learn it now. At least I will look intelligent when my son takes Art class in his school. Moreover Steve Jobs single most important class that he ever took was Calligraphy!

Just browsed through this and drew a portrait and an apple with shadows with pencil.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Creating apps and web pages in Telugu

I would like to create Telugu learning apps in iPhone and iPad for kids.

Tools of help:

Creating apps with Google App Engine

Google App Engine provides free service to host scalable apps on Google's infrastructure. I just built a simple and rudimentary app to post movie reviews. Main tools and skills involved:

  • Python
  • HTML
  • CGI
  • GQL
  • App Engine SDK

Presenting effectively

My son's first birthday is coming up. My wife has long been talking about creating a movie with all the photos and videos that we captured so far.

Also, ability to communicate effectively is a key to success. What better way to convey a message than with audio visuals? Picture is worth 1000 words. The master presenter Steve Jobs's skill is analyzed by Carmine Gallo here.

Stanford has a nice entry level course on Multimedia production that gives good overview and tools to produce some nice movies.

  • Creating storyboards
  • Creating audio with GarageBand
  • Shooting great photos and videos
  • Editing photos with Photoshop
  • Editing movies with iMovie