For those who find this story interesting and are unfamiliar with it, or would like a deeper dive, I just finished the book <em>Bad Blood</em> which tells the story. Highly recommend.
EDIT: Finished reading the book, not writing the book. Author is Pulitzer-Prize winning John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal. I am very much not him.
Bad Blood, it's by the WSJ reporter that broke the original story.
The craziest parts are about how blatantly she was lying, as well as about how absolutely batshit the "Sunny" guy is. There were so many red flags internally, but they threw millions at intimidating former employees.
That E3 must have been the highlight of Steve Race's career. He had left the failing Sega just about a year before over difficulties with (among other things) SOJ's refusal to allow him to do these kind of stunts.
Some other funny and silly things Race did during E3 1995 included putting PlayStation napkins on every table at the SEGA party, and releasing PlayStation balloons all over the Convention.
It really is too bad that less than a year after launching the PlayStation both him Olaf Olafsson(the guy talking) and most of the nonjapanese staff at Sony's Interactive Entertainment division got fired, despite the Play Station doing amazingly.
if your interested in more of the story the end of the book console wars covers it quite extensively. Its mostly a book about SEGA and even at that mostly about Tom Kalinske but its got a lot of good background on both Nintendo and Sony as well.
If you like the F-117, there’s a great book about it’s creation from concept to execution by the father of stealth technology. It’s a lot of interesting history and engineering about Lockheed Martin, their Skunk Works group, and some of the most ambitious aerospace projects of the 20th century.
Plug for the excellent book Bad Blood which chronicles the Theranos story by the reporter that broke it. They’re also making it into a movie with Jennifer Lawrence starring as Holmes.
I'm a big fan of the book about the Theranos debacle, Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. It's a great case study on messiah complexes, bad leadership, and organizational dysfunction.
Amazon Link - can't recommend it enough, hard to put down and very well weaved together
Carreyrou owns the story - it's hard to describe just what he was up against. All the big names in SV didn't just love Holmes, they praised her, and then they trashed John and the WSJ for going after her.
It took a lot of courage to go against these people and to pursuit the truth in this story. Not to mention that the owner of the WSJ, Murdoch, was a huge personal investor in Theranos (and to his credit didn't intervene to kill the story when Elizabeth asked him to)
There is no inherent risk of keeping your AC on during hot days, that is what its for. The problem is when all the houses on the block crank the AC as low as it goes the electrical distribution network is going to struggle to keep up. Recommend this book if you would like to know more about the electrical grid.
I highly recommend reading this book on the Skunk Works. It goes really in depth into how the F117, U2, and SR-71/A-12 programs came about. There are a few short sections in it by people associated with the skunk works, and IIRC Dyson wrote one.
https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed-ebook/dp/B00A2DIW3C
I'm currently reading The Grid by Gretchen Bakke, which goes into a lot of detail about our energy infrastructure and why the transition to renewables is wayyy more complicated and difficult than you might think. Would recommend!
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is really good too.
They should do an episode about Theranos, there's interesting tinfoil theories about why the deep state (Kissinger, George Schultz, and many Silicon Valley people) were interested in a new way to quickly analyze people's blood with just a few drops.
+1 for Will Larson's stuff. An Elegant Puzzle is a fantastic read if you're interested in director/VP/CTO level engineering practice management.
> How about you? What are you planning for your career path?
Management. Much less sexy than the technical work, but I'm enjoying the people/process flavored challenges. Top-end of the comp band for engineering management at my current company is well above the "I can live comfortably" line for me.
Get and (try) to read this book.... Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country.
It is 800 pages of pure insomnia-busting prose, your brain will literally execute a HALT command to end the misery. I've never made it past page 49. Now all I have to do is think of the book and my brain shuts down completely. It really is that horrible.
It's been a while since I read it, but I recall the book Console Wars as basically being huge praise for this guy and Sega in general.
Hahahah, after readying the actual book Console Wars, I wouldn't be surprised :) The business behind our favorite childhood consoles is pretty interesting. I highly recommend it: https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation-ebook/dp/B00FJ379XE
It was an excellent console.
I just meant that a lot of Super Nintendo's more famous IP is still being used in new games today. On top of that you have games like Super Smash Bros. that incorporates so much of their IP. Sega really didn't have a lot of their own IP outside of Sonic and very little that's still being made today outside of it. It also doesn't help that the Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast all failed so badly.
It's easy for younger people whose first Zelda game was Breath of the Wild to make their way to A Link of the Past than it is to Crusader of Centy even if the latter might actually have been the better game (albeit also a clone). Same with playing Ness in Super Smash Bros. today then playing Earthbound.
I mean just look at what SSB did for Earthbound. I'm ALWAYS amazed at how big of a following came out of nowhere. I played it came out when a neighbor brought it over and loved it but no one at school had any idea of what I was talking about when I mentioned it. For two decades it was the gem only I was aware of then people started exploring that Ness character and suddenly it's the internet's favorite RPG.
For those interested on the topic, Console Wars is a fantastic book about what was happening between the two companies.
I can understand that sentiment. So let me clarify the context of the comment.
We were discussing the threat in terms of physical military attack. In that context the type of redundancy we are talking about (multiple feeds to each substation) is relevant and helpful to the resiliency of the grid as a whole under physical attack.
Now, the problems with the grid that you discuss are different on each case, so I'd like to share some thoughts on each of the examples you present.
If you're interested in learning more about the grid I recommend the book below.
If anyone hasn't read Ben Rich's book Skunk Works they should probably do so. Great book, and it goes in detail on the conception and development of this plane (as well as others!)
"Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation"
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700
its not a full recomendation, since its too focused on sega and has some "artistic liberties" either from the individuals telling their side of the story or the writer.
about 70% of the book is about the "Tom Kalinske" era of Sega management, some interesting insights of how everybody went during his time as CEO of Sega of America.
... but very entertaining if you enjoyed home consoles from the 8-16 bit era.
Who says "impossible"? Experts in the field say it's decades away, and they are the ones I tend to believe.
As to why a bunch of people are creating startups, I suggest reading this
Building an engineering practice from scratch is not really something you can grasp via podcasts and blog posts. You're going to need to set aside a lot of time for deep, focused thinking on this problem. Because it's a fairly organization and business specific problem.
Step 0: Determine what you budget is. Have a dialogue with business leadership about how much you can spend on this team both upfront (for recruiters, hiring bonuses, etc) and year-to-year (salaries/benefits).
Congrats, you have a budget. Now determine what your engineering practice actually looks like, or at least how you want it to look. Don't just immediately jump to "hiring people". Determine the the flow of work on a very basic level at least. Do you have QA processes? Are there staging/pre-prod environments? What does the dev tooling look like? Are you going to be open to multiple tools/frameworks/ideologies, or are there one or two you'd like to pick from -- are you going to avoid sprawl or embrace it for some period of time? What does taking a set of work from "idea" to "deliverable" look like. Who will these engineers primary stakeholders be? Who sets priority?
Congrats, you now have a basic scaffold for how the engineering practice will function. Now determine what key players need to exist within that practice to meet the business needs. Hopefully your org has an HR flavored person to assist with writing things like hiring plans and needs assessments. Does your budget allow you to hire all of those key players? If not, ask for more budget or think about ways to restructure the team to work within the budget.
If this is a "we need to hire a buttload of people by end of 2022" situation, I'd highly recommend reading An Elegant Puzzle a few times cover-to-cover. Take notes. Highlight stuff.
An Elegant Puzzle is almost purpose-written for "OK so you've managed a team well, here's how you manage an entire engineering practice well".
:) Parte din poveste e ca au vrut sa faca analizele din cateva picaturi de sange. Intepatura in buricul degetelor in loc de IV. Cantitatea prea mica de sange/plasma i-a fortat la niste smecherii de care sigur te-ar distra sa afli. https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X
Elizabeth Holmes. I strongly recommend the book Bad Blood, it's all about her story. Even if you're someone who thinks reading is boring, it's an excellent read.
The person she is accusing is Sunny, her partner. Having read the book, it is obvious to me she is a oure blooded psychopath and is lying. Although that said, I find it hard to be sympathetic towards Sunny, as he was equally willing to lie and hurt people for profit. Neither of them are sorry for what happened, they are just sorry they got caught. There's a certain stupidity of the psychopath's brain, an irrational arrogance. Too stupid not to see how obvious it was they would get caught in the end. But they fooled many high profile people.
Transmission Line Engineer here, The Grid is a great read if you're interested in learning more about the U.S. Electrical Infrastructure
Saw a lot of that sort of East Vs West gaming-managment-culture in Console Wars, but that was Sega and the book ended with them so this would be really interesting both for being more up to date and with greater insight into Nintendo.
Somehow I doubt it tho. Reggie's quite the company man and I doubt he would show much of the darker/more secretive sides of Nintendo. But I expect lots of pleasant stories about how great Iwata and Miyamoto were. Definitely will buy.
The history of that question is a fun filled adventure. If you get a chance, check out Console Wars it’s a fun read on this cultural conflict of the 90s.
Check out the audio book for the journalist who investigated this scandal.
This woman is the second in command at fake business. The first is Bernie Madoff
Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle would be a perfect fit for you. Larson helped Stripe scale its engineering arm (now CTO of Calm) during its rapid growth phases. It's easily referencible:with each chapter and sub-section a vertical slice of value that stands on its own—and offers a stupid simple writing style/content, and a.
As a product person, it helped me go from being conversant on the underlying technologies of my product(s) to being more conversant with the engineers that built them. Sounds silly and obvious, but the very tactical guidance offered gave me a solid perspective on the kind of organization and products that engineers and developers want to be apart of. I gotta assume the same would apply to you (but in reverse?).
I love Cagan, but this was probably one of the most beneficial non-product management books I've ever read.