The Dip is, like most Godin’s posts, insightful, inspirational and brief (you could read the book in less than an hour). It also contains some great illustrations by Hugh McLeod.
The message of the book is deceptively simple: The Dip is the slog between starting and mastery. The Dip is the reason we are here.
Some quotes:
Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff a the right time.
Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
In a competitive world, adversity is your ally. The harder it gets, the better chance you have of insulating yourself from the competition.
And yet the real success goes to those who obsess.
It’s easier to be mediocre than it is to confront reality.
The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.
If you are in Zurich, you can borrow my copy. Just ask.
In The Blissful Interview Candidate Gavin Terrill writes about an interview question he often asks[*], the various steps of the question, how people usually perform, etc.
One of the main points of his post is something that often I feel candidates don’t really understand: there is no Right Answer to the interview question and that is not what the interviewer is looking for, anyway. In Terrill’s words:
The point of this exercise is not for the candidate to get everything right, but to see how they operate when they don’t know an answer. My observation is that the more competent you are, the more intelligent a conversation you can have, and that is really what I’m looking for here. I like to see candidates who are on a voyage of discovery, buoyed by a passion for knowledge and personal improvement.
So the next time you have a technical interview, don’t try to guess what perfect answer is expected from you. Just be yourself, think about the problem and aim to have an intelligent discussion with the your interviewer. That tends to work out better.
[*] Yes, Singletons are the root of all evil. But that is not the point here, so let go of your anger and reflect on the nature of job interviews instead.
[Originally posted on what used to be a separate blog 'On jobs, work and careers' and later was merged into this blog.]
When we talk about work and career, there is a lot of talk about resumes and how to get a job. But it is as important to select your employer carefully. After all, having a mind-numbing job at a company you don’t respect never helped anyone’s career.
So when you next search for a job, be sure to seek out those employers that seem to provide the sort of environment and challenges that you are interested in. For some companies, you can already tell from their job ads. For example:
[Originally posted on what used to be a separate blog 'On jobs, work and careers' and later was merged into this blog.]
Marc Andreessen has a recent article on How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with. If you are interested in maximizing the chances of getting that job interview, it is a good idea to read about what people like Marc look for in a candidate during a hiring process.
For Marc, it comes down to three main things: drive, curiosity and ethics. Drive and curiosity are closely related; they seem to be the direct consequence of passion.
Marc writes that you can see drive in a candidate’s background (read “resume”):
For the background part, I like to see what someone has done.
Not been involved in, or been part of, or watched happen, or was hanging around when it happened.
I look for something you’ve done, either in a job or (often better yet) outside of a job.
The business you started and ran in high school.
The nonprofit you started and ran in college.
If you’re a programmer: the open source project to which you’ve made major contributions.
Something.
If you can’t find anything — if a candidate has just followed the rules their whole lives, showed up for the right classes and the right tests and the right career opportunities without achieving something distinct and notable, relative to their starting point — then they probably aren’t driven.
And you’re not going to change them.
Motivating people who are fundamentally unmotivated is not easy.
Surprisingly enough, this drive part is missing from the vast majority of the new grad resumes that I review. I don’t know what is the reason for that. What I do know is that the few resumes that show evidence that the candidate has ‘done’ do stand out. And get at least a phone call.
Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast.
Free Exchange blog at The Economist: Sick man no more: the German economy and labour market is recovering:
Germany is indeed waking from its sclerotic slumbers and might post a growth rate of 3% in 2007. That would more than double the 1995 to 2005 average growth rate of 1.4%, and could even exceed expected American and British 2007 growth numbers.
Hi, I am Ana and this is my site. If you are the curious kind, you might want to read a bit more about me. Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely mine and not those of my employer, past, present or future.
