Why I am good at getting things done but not good as a programmer

When confronted with a problem that needs to be solved my approach is to solve it quickly, not necessarily elegantly. If I find a problem in an application I will try something to fix it... Doesn't work? Try something else? Solves the problem but creates a new one, if the new one seems smaller fix it, if it seems bigger try something else.

This approach is excellent for getting things done and working quickly. But not so good for writing large amounts of elegant code. A real programmer would look at the problem, analyze the code, and figure out what is the best and most efficient way to rewrite the code to eliminate the problem. My approach is get rid of it as soon as possible.

While my approach is great for getting stuff up and running without taking a lot of time it usually results in some pretty jumbled code. Lots of band-aids, spaghetti code, ad hoc fixes, etc. It works but it usually ends up being pretty inefficient, lumbering and kludgey.

I think this is why I am better at being a manager than a programmer. As a manager I don't have to sit and think things through, I can let the people who are good at that do it and I can just worry about getting things working.

Andy Dick on George Bush

Random things I am reading

Interesting article on how to gain muscle mass doing minimal exercise. Really not all that groundbreaking, but still interesting.

Yet another article on why geeks make good lovers.

Mark Cuban's Rules for Startups

Mark Cuban's rules for start-ups, and how my company broke almost all of them.

1. Don't start a company unless its an obsession and something you love. My company was started by some people obsessed and in love with the technology but my guess as to the primary motivation of the majority of the founders is that they say the dollar signs.
2. If you have an exit strategy it's not an obsession. Our founders all had exit strategies built in to the initial round of funding. The exit strategy was actually put in by a very unscrupulous investor but I think he got the founders to agree to it by giving them an out as well. None of them got the chance to use it.
3. Hire people you think will love working there. This we did in the tech department. Sales I can't really speak for.
4. Sales cures all. This is where we failed big time. We started off with decent revenues, built the revenues up to close to $1 million a month, and then let it die. We assumed credit risk for payments and got shafted for a couple million. Then we changed the business model to get rid of that risk and no more sales happened, and thus no more revenue. As a public company it seems that the CEO thought that our money should come from the public markets, not from sales.
5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. This we did, although some people tried to do more.
6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. We didn't buy an espresso machine but we did spend tons of money on worthless crap that was not needed. Money that could have been reinvested into the company.
7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. We had offices. Big offices for some people. We had three suites in our building, two of them connected, the third, for C-level officers, was completely separate. The developers were in open cubicles. The developers were the only part of the company that functioned properly.
8. As far as technology, go with what you know. We did this to the most part.
9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. This we did at first but as the company grew (spent more money) we started putting in hierarchies. Things were to the most part kept flat but in some departments there were long, complicated hierarchies.
10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. We didn't do this other than spending fortunes attending trade shows which didn't get us a single customer. We didn't make branded swag though. Actually there were some golf balls, but that was it.
11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. We hired several PR firms and dumped them, hired our own PR guy, then hired more PR firms. This goes back to the C-level people focusing on the public markets rather than the core business.

Make the job fun for employees. I think I did this as much as I could.

James R Berry Predicts 200

Via Valleywag, some guy in the 60s gives a pretty good prediction of the year 2008.

David Paterson for President

How's this for honesty? NY Gov David Paterson calls a press conference to disclose that he and his wife both had affairs. Then he does an interview where he admits his drug use. But not just pot like Pataki - he tried cocaine.

As a little side note Pataki's mother was very shocked that her son had ever tried marijuana like everyone else who was alive in the 60s did.

This is honesty I could vote for.

Cash My Phone

I sent an old cell phone of mine in to CashMyPhone.com. I considered using SecondRotation but they didn't have that particular phone model listed on the web site so rather than send it and wait to see what they decided it was worth I just used CashMyPhone.

I got an email a few days after I sent the phone saying that they had received it. Then a couple of months later I got an email saying it had been "disqualified" and I had to pay $8 to get it back. So I replied saying please send it back to me, and no reply and no phone. A few more weeks pass and I get a "final" email warning me that if I don't request the phone back they will keep it.

I have sent it at least 4 emails to these people and have received no reply. The phone had no physical damage to it when I sent it to them. I'm starting to wonder if this whole thing is a scam - they either get $8 to ship the phone back to me or they get the whole phone for free.

Anyone have any experience with these guys? If I don't hear back by the end of the week I will file a complaint with the better business bureau.