By nice, I meant that the presentation was nice and clean. And I understood each individual piece of data but I am unsure if I was supposed to identify a trend amongst teams or not.
Forcing people to be in the office will not boost morale and productivity. There's probably a reason why personal and "side projects" are being done by her employees. Their work probably does not motivate them enough for them. And there's nothing wrong with dedicating some time for activities outside of the company - if it makes a happier employee, I'd say go for it.
Agree with the point that humans are fallible. We should always have back ups. A company with 1000s of paying customers should at least take steps to protect itself from this sort of catastrophe.
Startups have limited amount of funds to invest in their human resources so they will always be look for the best, the ones who take initiative, who goes all out to make something done right. I wouldn't give up hope just yet - start building something outside of what's formally required of you. Make an app, publish it, sell it and talk about it. You'll need to wear multiple hats in a startup so in addition to coding, if you can do the other stuff, you'll be a huge asset.
Agreed. I feel like it's more of an exercise to have some sort of vision but in reality, it's really difficult to predict what the environment will be like in 4 years.
Looking at what I have learnt just 2 years ago, some of it is already starting to get irrelevant!
I think you've outlined just how undervalued managerial skills actually are. I have seen many that have claimed that they can take up a manager's position yet can barely manage relationships with their friends.
I think that relationship skills are key to being a manager, in addition to all the other planning etc.
I'm not sure how approachable your manager is but it sounds like he needs help from you to bring moral up. A leader does not necessarily have to be a manager but of course, with everything, do at your own discretion.
I have tried. I set up project management software to try to get the team on the same page. Team liked it, manager scrapped it after 3 weeks.
I sent him a feature development blueprint which was well received but ignored.
Suggested he gave people more responsibilities, he did but then didn't like not being the conduit in which everything flowed so took all the responsibilities back.
Spent a day with him writing development goals for the next month. General goals for 3/6 months. This would get everyone on the page and stop priority switching. Trouble is he never stopped editing the document. Instead it just became a documented expression of his managerial style.
One day I got pissed off and wrote a pissy but constructive email about his managerial style. Again, fairly well received. He left alone for a week to complete the task I was on. Then everything went back to normal with random daily requests and project swapping.
I care for my work and want the company to succeed. I haven't been silent passenger :)
I'll give you he's not the most incompetent CEO out there, but turning the Microsoft he received from Gates into something that's "still afloat" is not that much impressive.
Microsoft is losing the new operating system war in a big, BIG way. Just because the boat is still afloat doesn't mean it's not rotting below the water line.
Sure but they have their R&D arm and they easily have enough cash to acquire upcoming companies. Granted of course, they will need to be smart enough to spin money out of those things but they aren't in a dreadful position like Kodak was.
I would not be so sure about that. I know a lot of people who like Windows 8 and others eager to get a Windows 8 tablet Pro(Intel). The one OS across different devices could turn out to be a powerful choice.
My experience is the opposite. The reaction I see to Win8 is a lot more negative than the reaction to Vista. They are all power users though, or former power users considering that none of us can figure out how to do basic tasks in Win8.
Btw, did you have to pay for your stats?