BoydSays

I also agree with Michael Raybman. People do chang...

2011-06-24T10:34:25.660-07:00

I also agree with Michael Raybman. People do change. From a management perspective, we must acknowledge this fact. A low performer can become a top performer. However, I believe a more truthful statement for managers would be to state "People cannot be changed. People change themselves."

Many managers may spend too much time trying to change people instead of helping them manage their own success.

@Micah, watch the video. He talks about how they ...

2010-06-02T22:42:48.392-07:00

@Micah, watch the video. He talks about how they repeated the test in India where the prizes were equivalent to two weeks salary, one month's, and two month's. Two month's salary for a 15 minute task should motivate anyone, but the performance was still worse for the people working under incentives.

In tasks paying a simple $20 it is hard to find mu...

2010-06-02T22:28:23.971-07:00

In tasks paying a simple $20 it is hard to find much motivation. If you make the incentive high enough you'll get more motivation but he is still right. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose are way more important than money. But if we didn't need money we probably wouldn't bother having jobs.

Good luck on your 1/2 marathon training. I thought about doing one but 60-90 minutes is more running than I want to do each Saturday. I did one a few years ago and since decided to stick with 5-10Ks plenty of exercise for my liking.

Thanks for this, Boyd! I have to present at a conf...

2010-02-15T16:59:52.533-08:00

Thanks for this, Boyd! I have to present at a conference in May and I'm totally applying your advice to my (already too long/too many slide) presentation. Wish me luck ;)

I think the biggest mistake you make about the cos...

2010-02-04T23:59:30.625-08:00

I think the biggest mistake you make about the costs, is that you assume that their technology (HipHop) is not mature. If it wouldn't be mature, the wouldn't deploy it in production on 90% of their machines, they would use it just on some small part of servers.

That said, in my opinion you're overestimating the impact it makes on testing. In my opinion, they wouldn't use that if testing or developer cost were too big and they can almost skip extra testing for compiled version.

Michael, I tend to agree with you, but remember th...

2010-02-04T19:40:13.833-08:00

Michael, I tend to agree with you, but remember that the point of this is advice for managers. As a manager, it's simpler to think that people can't change, because as you point out they can't be forcefully changed by other people. And the number of managers who fall into the trap of thinking they can "fix" their employees from traits that are pretty ingrown is very large.

Definitely not intended to discount people changing themselves, but that change is very hard, must be self motivated, and takes a long time.

This is a really interesting post, but I think tha...

2010-02-04T19:30:45.392-08:00

This is a really interesting post, but I think that to #1, people can change. Perhaps they can't be forcefully changed by other people, but if they really want to work on themselves and change, they can.

I don't have Zod Nazem's management experience, but I've known people who have changed dramatically with years.

Keep in mind the 50% reduction is in comparing Hip...

2010-02-04T11:05:12.125-08:00

Keep in mind the 50% reduction is in comparing HipHop to PHP with APC, for a first release I'd say this is pretty significant.

Anonymous: if they can get to a 10x or greater spe...

2010-02-03T14:47:33.662-08:00

Anonymous: if they can get to a 10x or greater speedup, then I get more interested. It's definitely a good area for them to look into, but I'm much more interested in areas like JITs that offer performance improvements that are completely below the surface of how the developers work.

Jack: I'm not sure what you mean by not doing justice on the technical side. I haven't seen the code or played with it for what it can do, so this is just my initial reaction. I'm honestly surprised that they only got a 50% reduction in CPU. I would have expected much closer to 90-95% reduction.

1. You're calculating the cost of 'now'...

2010-02-03T11:06:41.297-08:00

1. You're calculating the cost of 'now' and we know very well that when it comes to software its best served 'mature'. Takes time but I can see the benefit in the long term.

2. It might not be beneficial for a small business to compile their website but it might be worth it for 'small' hosting companies or startups who are looking for open source 'tools' to resist spending 5k for a new machine. Every little bit helps!

3. You analysis is quite hollow. It doesn't do any justice on the technical side.

It's 50% faster right now. They basically took...

2010-02-03T10:49:25.371-08:00

It's 50% faster right now. They basically took their fate in their own hands (as Google did before).

And I'd expect they'll try to make it all the way to 90% which is realistically possible. That still leaves it at 1:10 against native C. To get any farther you need an extremely complicated JIT , with tracing and specialization.

This opens up all those doors that PHP dev community wasn't able to open up themselves.

It's a smart move.

Interesting to combine some thinking on sales ince...

2010-01-19T05:36:05.184-08:00

Interesting to combine some thinking on sales incentives and your management maxims to highly reward the top performers at the expense of bottom performers.

Low performers should get screwed and quickly pushed out - particularly in sales. Minimal/zero bonuses help them self-select a new career/job quickly: correct incentives

Top performers ought to get rewarded well - up to the limits of what makes a sale 'profitable' for the company. Depending on contract duration, renewal rates, switching costs, etc., a company may only be able to look at the deal in terms of 1 year revenue/profit vs. multi-year. Therefore a continually escalating incentive can make a sale less desirable to a company and can incentivize a salesperson to further 'bunch' their sales into a massive quarter.

Public companies have the additional pressure of wall street scrutinizing each quarter. There is incentive to bring new revenue each quarter, but slowly and consistently so as not to raise expectations for each successive quarter. On an individual salesperson basis, one big quarter is unlikely to spike overall results, but nevertheless, huge quarters can be just as damaging to long-term value as mediocre quarters.

Which leads to the conclusion that what should be rewarded most highly is consistency. Its what wall street values and is what salespersons should be most highly valued for. Incentives structured to increment/decrement based on the previous quarters performance eliminates the incentive to spike or bail on a particular quarter and rewards most highly the salespeople who and consistently top performers.

great stuff boyd!

I'd post Anonymously too if I created a flawed...

2010-01-18T19:43:22.075-08:00

I'd post Anonymously too if I created a flawed fitness contest. I'd especially be anonymous if your sales team has quotas like the above ;)

I find your blog posting highly offensive, as the ...

2010-01-18T19:01:19.467-08:00

I find your blog posting highly offensive, as the creator of the fitness contest and more to the point, as a Sales Manager.

Hit the GYM!!

I was actually going to use impedance, but my body...

2010-01-18T15:58:34.556-08:00

I was actually going to use impedance, but my bodyfat scale died on me. Great Blog Boyd!

Great job Boyd. Now I fully expect a follow-up on ...

2010-01-13T18:31:48.708-08:00

Great job Boyd.
Now I fully expect a follow-up on General Zod's Principles of leadership.
AEKDB

http://askdreric-schoolpsychologist.blogspot.com/

Great post. I must say that it is not easy to foll...

2010-01-11T13:27:17.954-08:00

Great post. I must say that it is not easy to follow them in real life but you can if you keep reminding these to yourself.

Hi Eric! I think the blogosphere will be a better ...

2010-01-07T13:40:33.608-08:00

Hi Eric! I think the blogosphere will be a better place with you contributions, so please keep writing! :)