XPLANE.COM > bBlog / Archive: January 2004

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The L-Curve

January 31st, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Life

“Tour of the US Income Distribution: The red line represents a graph of family income across the population. The height of the curve at any point is the height of a stack of $100 bills equalling that income. Unless you have a very old browser you will be able to zoom. Be sure to zoom both in and out.”

Entrepreneurs of the Year

January 29th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Entrepreneurship

“Be fast, be frugal, be right. These are the business principles that spurred Janie and Victor Tsao to transform their home-based start-up into a $500 million powerhouse that Cisco Systems just couldn’t resist buying.”

The team-building lunch

January 27th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Project management

“When I listed my criteria for good teammates, I included ‘will have lunch with me on a regular basis.’ That seems to have surprised some of my readers, to say nothing of those who were apparently angered.”

drawyourboss.com

January 27th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Leadership

“The purpose of this site is to stick it to the man by showcasing pictures people draw of their bosses.� Please feel free to submit your pictures of your boss via email (as a .jpg or .gif file)… An easy way to make a drawing on your computer is to use the ‘Paint’ program in windows, then save the file as a .JPG file. Please submit only goofy pictures that make fun, no pictures that portray harm to others.”

Interdon’t

January 27th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Marketing

“How to Succeed at Getting Hired (and Lots of Ways Not To): While I write this from a new-media perspective, I have a decidedly old-world attitude about the job hunt, so my tips may help people in almost any field.”

Creative Recombination: Use What You Have

January 26th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Leadership

“Westland Helicopters became awash in so many change initiatives that it had trouble getting helicopters out the door. It had trapped itself in a cycle of repetitive-change syndrome in which executives addressed problems created by one wave of creative destruction with yet another wave of creative destruction that only compounded the problem.”

The Corporation: A Documentary

January 26th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“The Corporation delves into the ‘nature’ of an Institution. In law, the corporation is a ‘person.’ But what kind of person is it? Considering the odd legal fiction that deems a corporation a ‘person’ in the eyes of the law, the feature documentary employs a checklist, based on actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and DSM IV, the standard tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. What emerges is a disturbing diagnosis.”

Getting Your Rsum Read

January 26th, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Marketing

“I’ve been going through a big pile of applications for the summer internship positions at Fog Creek Software, and, I don’t know how to say this, some of them are really, really bad. This is not to say that the applicants are stupid or unqualified, although they might be. I’m never going to find out, because when I have lots of excellent applications for only two open positions, there’s really no need to waste time interviewing people that can’t be bothered to spell the name of my company right. So here are a few hints to review, if you’re sending out rsums.”

The Industry Standard: Guest Blog: Jimmy Guterman

January 21st, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in The Web

“It’s 2004 and you’re reading new writing on this website. Something must be terribly wrong. What year is it? Did you hit your head? Did I? Don’t worry. We writers may suffer delusions of personal grandeur, but this modest weblog is not the first step in some eventual resurrection of The Industry Standard. It’s not 1999 anymore. But there still is an Internet economy, as Google’s forthcoming IPO will remind everyone. Why not look at that economy with the Standard’s logo smiling at the top of the page?”

Confessions of a Car Salesman

January 21st, 2004 | Comments Off | Posted in Sales

“What really goes on in the back rooms of car dealerships across America? What does the car salesman do when he leaves you sitting in a sales office and goes to talk with his boss? What are the tricks salespeople use to increase their profit and how can consumers protect themselves from overpaying? These were the questions we, the editors at Edmunds.com, wanted to answer for our readers… We hired Chandler Phillips, a veteran journalist, to go undercover by working at two new car dealerships in the Los Angeles area.”