This makes so much sense, I’m surprised I haven’t heard it before.

http://bhorowitz.com/2010/08/23/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your-company/

This is an interesting analysis of common developer attitudes.

http://andyjko.com/2010/07/13/mozilla-summit-2010-and-dev-culture/#comment-103

This is a very though provoking slide deck. For instance, Netflix tries to avoid using process to handle the complexity that increases as the business grows, since excessive process hinders their ability to respond to market shifts. Processes are still important for irrecoverable mistakes, but allowing recoverable mistakes instead of requiring approval makes the employees more productive.

The most surprising part is that Netflix doesn’t track vacation time and they don’t have any kind of dress code. This is probably only possible since they purposely get rid of employees that are not high performers, and they don’t tolerate employees that poison the team despite being talented.

This is brilliant but sad.

Open floor plans can reduce productivity by 66%!!!

Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us

This is the most profound youtube video I have ever watched. It’s 90 minutes, and it’s filled with things I never knew. For example, it explains what the Atkins Diet and the typical Japanese diet have in common that helps you stay thin. If you don’t want to watch all 90 minutes, the section from 45:00 to 1:09:00 explains how fructose causes all sorts of health problems. If you still don’t want to watch this, here are a few quick facts and teasers:

• There is an epidemic of obese 6-month olds, so it’s not just laziness that causes weight gain.
• Fructose gives you calories without making you feel full.
• Fructose creates almost as many health problems as ethanol.
• Fructose is converted into much more fat that glucose, since fructose does not trigger insulin production to use the sugar, so it just gets stored. You aren’t going to succeed in a low fat diet that is high in fructose.
• High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and white sugar (sucrose) are equally as bad for you.
  • HFCS is a mixture of approximately 50% glucose and 50% fructose.
  • Sucrose is a molecule made up of a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule bound together, so it is exactly 50% fructose.

This presentation is done by Robert H. Lustig, MD, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, in the Division of Endocrinology Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at the University of California San Francisco.

Since it such a long video, you may want to download it.

This is a very interesting article on the history of producing nitrogen for fertilizer.

http://discovermagazine.com/2001/apr/featbomb

This is a nice presentation on how innovative products need to be managed differently than commodities and that new technologies are continually commoditized. (I also like how the lighting in the auditorium reminds me of MST3K.)