mtrencseni

Freeman Dyson - Rebel without a Phd
Time investment: 5 min
Dyson was a very cool scientist, he worked with Feynman on quantum field theory, but he never got a Phd.
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140326-a-rebel-without-a-ph-d/

Tutorspree
Time investment: 5 min
Tutorspree was very successful driving traffic with SEO, so they relied on it too much. Then Google changed the ranking algorithm, and they failed. Lesson: initial success can blind you and eventually lead to failure.
http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-dependency-and-the-end-of-tutorspree

mtrencseni

What I Took Away From Google's Engineering Culture
Time investment: 10 min
He is writing a book, can't wait for it to come out.
Takeaways: shared tools, good documentation, coding conventions, code reviews, automated testing.
http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/what-i-learned-from-googles-engineering-culture

Leslie Lamport - Thinking for Programmers
Time investment: 60 mins
Easily the best 60 minute talk I've heard in a while. The PPT is funny. Talks about thinking before programming, when, why and how to write specs, when to use a formal spec like TLA+, how Amazon used TLA+ in AWS, confusing thinking about a problem with writing code. Can you write quicksort without recursion? Btw. Lamport just got the Turing award.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/3-642

mtrencseni

A list of books I recently found interesting but haven't read.

The Engineering Manager Handbook
Bought.
Oren Ellenbogen's new book, based on his popular newsletter Software Lead Weekly. http://leadingsnowflakes.com/

Project Management Lite
Bought.
I realized I need to do better as a project manager, so I bought the kindle book.

mtrencseni

J.R.R. Tolkien on His “Aryan Descent”
Time investment: 3 mins
Always keep your calm, always be in style.
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/j-r-r-tolkien-snubs-a-german-publisher.html

Carol Dweck On Being Perfect
Time investment: 40 mins
Dweck found that people with what she calls a growth mindset don't fear failure and embarrassment in the same way. Where someone with a fixed mindset is afraid to persevere in the face of a setback or big challenge, the growth mindset person jumps in. They see it as an opportunity to develop and grow. That makes growth mindset people potentially more resilient and creative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgUF5WalyDk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck

mtrencseni

The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software
Time investment: 22 mins
By Herb Sutter. The biggest sea change in software development since the OO revolution is knocking at the door, and its name is Concurrency.
http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm

An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development
Time investment: 21 mins
Java has changed. The language recently acquired lambda expression and traits; libraries provide it with true lightweight threads – just like Erlang’s and Go’s. And, most importantly, a more modern, lightweight approach now guides API, library and framework design, replacing all the old heavyweight, XML-laden ones.
http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2014/05/01/modern-java/

mtrencseni

How Modeling the Value of Your Time with a Single Number Can Simplify Decisions
Time investment: 3 mins
Your time at Prezi is worth about $30 / hour. If somebody asks you to do something that you think will take you 3 hours, you can ask the person/yourself: is this worth ~$100 to Prezi, or is my time better spent doing something else.
http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/how-much-is-your-time-worth

Shell Style Guide
Time investment: 30 mins
Google's style guide for writing good bash code.
https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/shell.xml

mtrencseni

Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR!
Time investment: 6 mins
Aquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irjgfW0BIrw

Peter Thiel’s Stanford Startup class notes
There's also a book coming out.
http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup
http://zerotoonebook.com/

mtrencseni

How to become a good theoretical physicist
http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~Gadda001/goodtheorist/index.html

Preparing a speech
Time investment: 30 mins
Because “imagine everyone's naked” is terrible advice, by Zach Holman.
http://speaking.io/

The NYT Innovation Report
Time investment: 30 mins

mtrencseni

Systems thinking

Intro

• how I heard about systems thinking
• what it is
• how I applied it at Prezi
• steal my job!

mtrencseni

Bill Gates' blog
http://www.gatesnotes.com

Leadership pipeline
Time investment: 5 mins
A model of the different levels of leadership: managing self, managing others, managing managers, managing functions, and so on.
http://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/leadership/building-leaders-at-every-level-a-leadership-pipeline#.U6BS5JS1bIT

Level 5 Leadership
Time investment: 20 mins