Technical Debt - 10x Software Development
An article or guide about managing technical debt in software development to improve productivity and code quality.
John Cox
Blogs · @wyome
Tagged advice · everything
taoyue.com: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men
The author argues that he avoids hiring purportedly "brilliant" men because they are typically fast-talking con artists who start projects enthusiastically but lack the discipline to finish them—the real problem being not intelligence itself but the combination of overconfidence and inability to handle repetitive work. Drawing on personal experience with charismatic failures like his former partner Carroll, he illustrates how such men generate excitement around grand schemes, then lose interest when faced with practical details and modest execution. Instead, he advocates for hiring ordinary, steady workers who possess five simple qualities: good health, thriftiness, clear communication, attention to detail, and courage—arguing that business success comes from extracting consistent effort from reliable people rather than depending on the erratic brilliance of talented misfits.
Ten free security utilities you should already be using | ZDNet Photo Gallery
A gallery of ten recommended free security utilities for protecting your computer and data.
FPA Journal - Personal Financial Ratios: An Elegant Road Map to Financial Health and Retirement
This is a directory and informational resource from the Financial Planning Association designed to help people find and understand when to work with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional. The site emphasizes that CFP® professionals can assist with various financial needs—from setting goals and managing investments to retirement planning and debt elimination—and recommends interviewing multiple planners to find the right fit for your specific situation.
Basement.org: 10 Things We Can Learn From Apple
An article examining key lessons and principles that can be drawn from Apple's business practices and corporate philosophy.
Some Simple SQL Rules to Live By
A collection of best practices and principles for writing clean and efficient SQL code.
Wesabe
I don't have an actual article to summarize here. What you've shared is the homepage and editorial standards page of Due, a retirement and personal finance publication. To provide the kind of summary you've requested, I would need the text of a specific article that was saved—for instance, a particular piece about a retirement strategy, investment approach, or financial planning topic. If you could share the actual article content, I'd be happy to summarize it in the format you've described.
CEO and senior exec blogs
A collection of blog posts and insights from CEOs and senior executives on business strategy and leadership.
David Maister > Articles > Why (Most) Training is Useless
Most business training fails because companies use it as a standalone event disconnected from organizational systems, management alignment, and reward structures—when it should be the final step in a carefully sequenced change program that first addresses why people should care, what behavior will be measured and rewarded, and what systems support the new practices. Training is fundamentally a skill-building exercise requiring hands-on practice and emotional development, not merely intellectual understanding, yet it's typically delivered as educational content by academics disconnected from real workplace application. Effective training demands that senior leaders visibly commit, operating groups train together with their managers present, participants prepare rigorously beforehand, and the organization immediately applies and monitors the skills in their regular work.
How to Eat Sushi (sushi etiquette)
A guide to proper etiquette and techniques for eating sushi respectfully and authentically.
I-resign.com - Resignation Letter
Find information, resources and relevant links for i-resign.com. This domain may be for sale.
Escape from Cubicle Nation: Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world
J. Timothy King argues that the optimal company size is between 20-30 employees, beyond which management becomes burdensome and less rewarding than smaller operations. He contrasts this positive experience with his subsequent move to a larger, more stable corporate employer, suggesting that the trade-offs of corporate employment may not be worth the security they promise.
The Five Most Common Lies in Business
Paul LaFontaine, who left a major music company to consult on business honesty, identifies five pervasive lies in corporate culture: claiming people are a company's most important asset (when financial assets actually are), presenting decisions as rational when they're really personal preferences, judging performance objectively when favoritism determines outcomes, separating business from personal stakes (when everything in business is personal), and prioritizing customers over self-interest (when people actually prioritize themselves). He argues that these lies persist because executives avoid honest conversations about what's really motivating their decisions, and that genuine candor—even anger—handled directly would be more truthful than the euphemisms that typically cloak business dealings.
10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed
# Summary This article distills lessons from 14 years of self-employment into ten common mistakes small business owners make: being selective about customers rather than pursuing everyone, finding the balance between frugal and wasteful spending, avoiding pretense about your business size or capabilities, recognizing that contracts matter less than the relationships behind them, trusting your intuition about people and deals, staying human and informal rather than overly corporate, letting your personality shine through rather than adopting a generic "businesslike" persona, and focusing on genuine value creation rather than just making sales. The final two lessons emphasize that while value creation is essential, you must also continuously optimize your processes to deliver that value cost-effectively and sustainably.
Bona tempora volvant--by Guy Kawasaki: How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion
Guy Kawasaki identifies fourteen specific warning signs that a successful company is experiencing a "bozo explosion"—the decline into mediocrity that often follows rapid growth and IPO success—including overuse of buzzwords like "partner" and "strategic," excessive perks, hiring based on credentials rather than merit, and management arrogance. He then prescribes seven remedies: hire people better than yourself, eliminate arrogance, deliberately understaff and undergrow rather than chase growth at all costs, look beyond résumés when hiring, diversify your workforce, and promptly remove underperformers rather than hoping they'll improve.
Management hack: The lost skill of tuning in » Slacker Manager
An article about the forgotten management skill of attentive listening and presence in the workplace.
5 careers: Big demand, big pay - Feb. 3, 2006
An article discussing five high-demand, high-paying career opportunities as of early 2006.
The Art of Execution
Guy Kawasaki's "The Art of Execution" offers practical guidance on moving from fundraising success to actual business execution, arguing that entrepreneurs must set specific, measurable, relevant, and "rathole-resistant" goals with clear accountability rather than vague aspirations. The piece serves as both a startup manual and a corrective for organizations that have lost focus, emphasizing that getting the money is only the beginning—the harder work of disciplined execution and goal-setting follows.
How to Do What You Love
Graham argues that finding work you love is essential for both happiness and excellence, yet most people are systematically misled about this possibility through childhood education that frames work as tedium, social pressures to pursue prestigious careers, and financial anxieties that push them toward money over passion. He distinguishes between two viable paths—the "organic route" of pursuing what you love directly, and the riskier "two-job route" of working for money while building toward your passion on the side—and emphasizes that the ability to produce concrete work and resist prestige are key tests for discovering what you truly want to do. The essay concludes that while finding such work is genuinely difficult and often takes decades, recognizing it as possible and maintaining awareness of what genuinely appeals to you, rather than what you think you should want, significantly improves your odds.
Garrett Dimon / The Time is Now for Front-End Architects
Front-end development has become sufficiently complex—spanning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, usability, and integration with backend systems—that most teams need a dedicated front-end architect rather than leaving these concerns to either backend engineers or markup-only developers. The author argues that current enterprise frameworks like ASP.Net and Websphere demonstrate the consequences of treating frontend technologies as an afterthought, producing substandard markup and failing to separate concerns properly. True front-end architects must understand both client-side and backend technologies well enough to make informed decisions about implementation approaches and communicate effectively with engineers across the stack.